


It's One Hell of a Ride

by gay_writes_with_mac



Series: It's One Hell of a Ride Universe [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, But mostly fluff, Canon? What Canon?, Depressed Local Man Adopts Criminally Optimistic Daughter, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Glenn and Maggie Live Happily Ever After That's It The End, I Had To Learn Police Radio Codes For This, Police Officer Rick Grimes, Rookie Officer Tara Chambler, Sophia Gets Everything She Deserves, Tara Is the Human Version of a Golden Retriever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 33,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21556144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_writes_with_mac/pseuds/gay_writes_with_mac
Summary: Three years after a terrible accident involving a future police officer serving his probationary period with seasoned officer Rick Grimes, Rick is again thrown into the training saddle. This time, he's paired up with Tara Chambler, three days out of the police academy, extremely optimistic, and absolutely clueless. Rick is determined not to get attached. Tara asks far too many questions and he's probably just going to lose her anyway. But Tara has an extremely irritating way of getting people to like her, and Rick slowly finds himself to be no exception.
Relationships: Rick Grimes/Michonne, Tara Chambler & Rick Grimes, Tara Chambler/Rosita Espinosa
Series: It's One Hell of a Ride Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629472
Comments: 62
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1: Rookie

“Rick, you’re the most experienced person we’ve got. And she needs someone experienced.”

“Get Shane to do it.”

“Shane’s too impulsive.” Officer Hershel Greene leans back in his chair, staring Rick down with his usual piercing gaze. “She needs a strong hand, but you can’t pin her down. Shane gets too hung up on the rules. Either he’ll crush her or she’ll blow up and do something stupid. You’re the only person I trust with her.”

“I told you I was done training rookies.” Rick shakes his head, clenching his fists at the surge of memories. “Someone else. Anyone else. Just not me.”

Officer Greene shakes his head, pushing a file over towards Rick. “You’ll like her. And she’ll be good for you. You should give yourself another chance. You used to love mentoring.”

“Yeah, I used to.” Rick furrows his brow, massaging his temples where a headache is starting to arise at the memory of gunfire ringing in his ears. “Come on, Basset’s been begging anyone who’ll listen-”

“I barely trust Basset with his own life, much less someone else’s.” Officer Greene shakes his head, and his gaze intensifies as he stares at Rick. “Please, Officer Grimes. You’re my only hope here.”

Rick huffs a sigh, studying his polished boots instead of the old man’s face. “All right, Hershel. I’ll bring her along on a few calls. But don’t expect much.”

Officer Greene smiles, reaching across the desk to press Rick’s hand. “Thank you, Rick. I don’t think you’ll regret it. She’s waiting for you in the next room.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rick pauses outside the room, leaning his head against the doorframe to take a moment. He hasn’t taken on a rookie since the _incident,_ and he never thought he would again. And just behind this door is a twenty-something girl coming here with her head full of fantasies and _Brooklyn Nine-Nine_ scenes, optimistic yet clueless, and she’s about to trust him with her life. 

Before he can linger any longer on the past, Rick gives his head a shake as if he can push out the memories and shoves the door open before he can change his mind and tell Hershel to pick someone else.

Rookies are always excited. But Rick can only describe the girl bouncing around the room as the human version of a golden retriever puppy. She can’t even hold still, and although she’s clearly trying to look serious and professional by pacing the room evenly, every few steps she can’t contain herself any longer and takes a little skip. In her rush, she’s put her badge on a bit crooked, and one of her pigtails is definitely higher than the other on her head. _Pigtails._ Rick snorts a little, stopping her pacing with an extended hand. “Officer Rick Grimes.”

She freezes for a minute, her mouth dropping open almost comically, before regaining her senses and rushing to shake his hand. “Tara - I mean, _Officer_ Tara Chambler.” The pride with which she says the word _officer_ tells Rick she’s only been out of the academy a day or two, and before he can help himself, he’s cracking a smile.

_No._ Can’t get attached. Getting attached is stupid in this line of work, especially to excited rookies bouncing around with their badges on crooked. 

“You get to work with me,” he says, and it’s harder than it should be to sound stern. “But you gotta follow _my_ rules. You do what I say, without question, hesitation, or anything less than perfection. I tell you to run, you run. I tell you to hide, you hide. I tell you to get back and let me handle it, you do it, got it?”

Tara - _Officer Chambler_ nods eagerly, eyes practically bugging out of her head with excitement. “Got it - yes, sir.” 

“You are at the bottom of the food chain. You do not complain, you do not talk back, and you do paperwork if I tell you to do paperwork, got it?”

“Got it.” It’s probably going in one ear and out the other, but Rick can’t find proof enough to fault her, so he keeps going without comment.

“You’re riding with me today. Grab your gear and get ready.” Rick turns around on his heel, starting to the door. He pauses only for a moment, not bothering to look back at his new trainee. “And fix your badge.”

He only hears part of her embarrassed squeak before the door slams behind him.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chambler joins him by the squad car in a few minutes, badge so straight Rick wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d used a ruler. Her cheeks are still noticeably flushed, but her ridiculous smile hasn’t even faded. “Where are we going?”

She’s probably expecting a high-speed chase any minute now. Rick points her towards the car, towards Shane’s usual seat. “Peletier house.”

“What are we gonna do there?” He can practically hear the next question simmering just below the surface. _Drug bust? Catch a bank robber? Stop a homicide?_

“We’re going to check on the Peletiers.”

“Why?”

God, she asks so many questions. Rookies always do. It’s exactly like last time, and that hurts so much he’s almost ready to order her out of the car. But she doesn’t deserve that, at least not yet, even if she’s as annoying as a bee that won’t quit following him around. 

“What do you know about the Peletiers?”

_How much am I gonna have to tell you about the Peletiers?_ is the real question, but Rick bites it back. Chambler shrugs. 

“Not much. I’m not from this town. I think I met the one - Carol? - at the grocery store.”

“Yeah, well…” _Shit._ Rick sighs, deliberately avoiding her gaze. “Ed Peletier beat his wife and daughter every day for twenty years, until finally Sophia called 911 when he pulled a gun on her mom. Police came, one of us got gunned down trying to get Carol out. Ed’s doing forty years in the state penitentiary for it. So we’re just swinging by, making sure everything’s fine.”

“Oh…” Chambler becomes much more subdued at that, stopping the frantic bouncing of her knee. “What might be wrong…?”  
  


“Sophia got hit in the shootout, lost an eye,” Rick explains. “She’s still got some trouble moving around. And Daryl Dixon moved in with ‘em afterwards, said he’d keep an eye on ‘em. So we’re just making sure Daryl’s doing fine and Carol doesn’t need anything and isn’t having any issues.”

Sophia is on the porch when Rick pulls up, wearing her Georgia Tech hoodie and working her way through a textbook so thick it makes Rick’s head hurt looking at it. She’s bounced back remarkably from the shy girl who spent half her time at the Grimes house, holed up in the bedroom with Carl. She’d always been bright, even three years younger than Carl - she’d skipped kindergarten, then first grade, then finally hopped up to join him in fourth after breezing through second grade. Rick had asked him to play nice with the tiny redheaded girl, three years younger than the rest of her class, and he’d begrudgingly agreed. Two days later they walked home together, grinning, just two peas in a pod.

_ Dammit, not Carl. Not right now. _

She grins, same smile he’s been seeing since she was six, looking up from her textbook and brushing a strand of red hair out of her face. “Hey, Rick. Here to check on my mom?”   
  


“You know it.” Rick takes a seat beside her, taking a look at the textbook. “Quantum physics?”

“I’m going for a master's in nuclear engineering. Welcome to my life.” Sophia looks up to wave at Chambler, who shuffles uncomfortably in front of them, clearly uncertain about her role here. “You new here?"

“Sophia, this is Officer Chambler, she’s doing her training period with me,” Rick cuts in smoothly, standing up from the porch steps. Sophia’s face twists briefly in surprise at his words, but she doesn’t comment. 

“Nice to meet you, Officer Chambler. Rick here is all right, I guess, although he’s as grumpy as a bear.” Sophia giggles at his mock frown, grinning at Chambler. “Don’t let him scare you, his bark is worse than his bite.”

Chambler’s smile is back, albeit a bit nervous. “Thanks. I’ll steer clear of the claws.”

“Your mom’s fine, then?” Rick asks, already starting back to the car. These calls on the Peletier house are more for show than for any real purpose - Daryl takes care of them, practically treats Sophia as his own daughter, and Carol hasn’t shown any signs of trouble since Ed was convicted. 

“She’s doing great,” Sophia confirms, waving good-bye. “Bye, Rick. See you around, Officer Chambler.”

“Tara,” his partner calls back, returning the friendly wave as she slides back into the car. “Do you come here every day?”

“If I can,” Rick answers, tires grinding over the Peletier’s gravel driveway. It’s the same sound as it was that night three years when he pulled up to answer a domestic violence call. He hears that sound in his nightmares.

If only he’d been faster…

“Where do we go now?” Chambler studies him with wide eyes, again with all the questions, and Rick is already regretting taking her with him. He just wants it to stop. Just wants her to stop.

“Red light on West Road,” he answers, and his voice is clipped as he pushes down on the gas pedal. “Look for people running red lights, safety hazards, things like that.”

It’s so much better when Shane is here. Shane doesn’t ask eleven million questions about everything and knows where they’re going without asking questions about that too and doesn’t make Rick have to worry about keeping him alive. But he’s stuck with Chambler now, stuck with her for six months at least, assuming she doesn’t need more time, and half an hour in, he’s not sure how much more of her he can take.

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen happen?” Chambler babbles, playing with her badge as she looks out the window, carefully watching the cars around them. “No, wait, what’s the _worst_ crime you’ve ever stopped? No-”

“Officer Chambler, you promised to follow my orders, correct?” Rick cuts her off, not glancing over at her.

“Yes, sir!”

“Then follow them now and shut the hell up.”

Dead silence other than the rumbling of the engine ensues. Rick still doesn’t look over, but he can see her biting her lip out of the corner of his eye, and he knows that he’s hurt her. Too bad. She’ll have to deal with significantly worse than bruised feelings in this job, assuming that she doesn’t wash out of probation.

It’s so quiet in the car that the dispatcher’s voice crackling over the intercom startles them both. “Rick, we’ve got a serious car crash near your location, definite injuries and possible fatalities. Reports say there’s at least three cars and they’re burning.”

“Got it. We’re 10-76 10-18.” Rick steps on the gas, flicking on the lights and sirens. “Grab the first aid kit from the back, paramedics probably aren’t on scene yet.”

Chambler obediently reaches for the kit, and her voice is uncharacteristically hesitant as she speaks up. “10-76 10-18 is en route quickly, right…?”

“Yep.” Rick makes the turn sharp, and Chambler yelps as she hits the side of the car. “You’re gonna have an interesting first day.”


	2. Understatement of the Century

Rick pulls up to the scene, wincing at the carnage. One of the passengers was thrown completely clear and lays motionless in the median, flopped over the guardrail. Blood and gore are smeared everywhere, coating the asphalt around the burning pile-up like spilled scarlet paint. Two of the cars are practically melted together, tongues of fire licking through the windows.

Rick snaps his fingers, startling Chambler, who looks almost in a trance, her mouth hanging open in horror. “Check the one in the road. I’m going to clear the cars.”

The snap seems to have cleared her a little and Chambler sprints off, pigtails bouncing behind her as she bolts towards the victim in the road. Rick goes to the cars, glancing in through each window. They’re empty except for one body, obviously dead already. Probably smoke inhalation. The rest of the victims are grouped together on the side of the road, except for one man, stumbling around in the median. When Rick gets closer, what he suspects is already confirmed - drunk. 

He goes through the field tests, ordering the man to recite the alphabet backwards and walk in a straight line. He can’t get past  _ X  _ and nearly veers into the burning wreckage attempting to follow the white line on the road. Familiar rage bubbling in the pit of his stomach, Rick lets him go for now, keeping him away from the families he hit. He’ll arrest him after the paramedics check him, or maybe have Chambler do it. She might as well get the practice, and it’ll be a good chance to verify she’s got the Miranda rights memorized.

Almost no one escaped unscathed. An infant in a rear-facing carseat got away with a few bruises, but everyone else is bleeding and several suffer from broken bones. He’s almost certain the mother has a concussion, but then the paramedics show up and he’s free to find Chambler and start taping off the crash site. On his way over, he makes the call for a traffic homicide investigator, walking past the cars to where he sent Chambler.

The stupid kid is on the ground, and even from a distance, he can see she’s doing CPR. A paramedic stands over her, futilely trying to call it, but Chambler keeps going, sweat dripping from her forehead as she fights her way through cycle after cycle.

Finally, Rick wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her off the body easily. “Listen, kid, it’s done. He’s gone.”

“No!” Chambler protests feebly, half-heartedly kicking at his leg; but the CPR has worn her out and she’s not nearly strong enough to pull free. “I had a pulse, he’s gonna wake up…”

“He’s not going to wake up.” Rick sets her down, keeping his hands on her waist to hold her back. “It’s over. Come on, help me tape this up.”

And then he looks at the body, the burned and broken corpse of a kid no more than twelve, and then into Chambler’s face. She’s milky pale and looks like she might pass out any minute, and Rick is suddenly reminded of the first time he saw a dead body on the job, the horrible sinking dread like a stone in the pit of his stomach at the sight of death’s pallor on a human face.

Rick sighs, taking his hands off her. “Kid, go to the car and get some water. I’ll take care of the tape and get the statements. And you’d better be ready to work when I get back there.”

Tara nods mutely and practically staggers away. Rick steps away from the body, allowing the confused paramedic to take over. “First day,” he mumbles by means of explanation, nodding in Tara’s direction. And he knows the paramedic will understand.

From what he manages to gather, the drunk man was driving home after a full night of straight drinking. He swerved erratically and ran one of the families out of their lane, sending them spinning into the next lane and crashing into the other vehicle, killing their son and his grandfather. The drunk man sustained a concussion and serious abdominal bruising in the collision, meaning he’ll need medical attention before Rick can arrest him. Rick takes his name and the hospital where he’ll be taken, giving them his dispatcher’s information so he can collect him as soon as he’s cleared.

When the last of the tape is up and the bodies are cleared away, Rick leaves the scene to the investigator. He finds Tara being violently sick behind the squad car, sniffling a little as she straightens. He still doesn’t like her much, she asks too many questions and he can’t stand people that optimistic, but Rick throws her a packet of tissues from the glove box anyway.

“Wipe your mouth and get in,” he calls, slamming his door before Tara can respond. She gets in a few moments later, still a little sniffly but remarkably composed. She’s still clutching the tissue package, squeezing it like a stress ball. 

After a few moments of silence, Tara turns to him, and her voice is so small. “Did you...the first time someone died? Like...like that…?”

“You mean, did I start crying on scene and spew everywhere? Nah.” After a few moments, though, Rick can’t bring himself to be quite that cold to her; she looks like she’s about to cry again and he’s not quite  _ that  _ mean. “But I pissed my pants.”

“...really…?” Tara looks up, her eyes round with shock. Rick nods, recalling with some still-lingering embarrassment the nicknames and teasing that had followed him for weeks after that. 

“Nobody’s gonna judge you for the first time, kid. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again, got it?”

Tara nods emphatically, wiping away the last of her tears on a clean tissue. “Good,” Rick tells her, and he must be either feeling kind or feeling crazy - he’s not sure which - because next he tells her “Then what happened today can stay between us. Come on, we gotta tell the families.”

He pretends not to see her grateful smile as he turns towards the first address. In some ways, telling the next-of-kin is harder than dealing with bodies.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It turns out that Tara is a godsend when it comes to speaking to bereaved families. She breaks the news quickly but gently, showing genuine sorrow for their loss. Rick watches in impressed silence as she offers to make phone calls to inform others or wait with the grieving relatives for someone to come. She even takes one wailing woman’s crying baby, easily soothing the child to give the widow a few moments of peace to grieve.

“You’re good with them,” Rick notes as they pull away from the house. “Babies, I mean.”

“Yeah, I’ve always wanted one,” Tara says wistfully, her brown eyes still sad as she gazes out the window. “I helped my sister a lot when my niece was born, her husband sucked and Meghan had a lot of health problems...experience, I guess.”

“Did your family come with you?” Rick asks, and he’s slowly finding himself curious about his new trainee. And then he notices that for a while - he can’t remember exactly when it shifted - he’s been thinking of her as Tara instead of as Chambler.  _ Dammit, Rick, don’t do this. _

“No.” Tara sighs, a trace of loneliness clear in her voice. “They stayed in Atlanta. Lilly has a good job as an oncology nurse, and Meghan has her friends...they couldn’t come with me out here.”

And Rick has more questions rising already, curious about why a city girl would move to a small town in the devil’s armpit of Georgia, but then he catches her eye in the mirror and for a second, just a second, it’s three years into the past and it’s not Tara sitting beside him but-

“Come on,” Rick says gruffly, pulling harder out of the driveway than he really had to. “Dispatcher, we’re 10-8.”

He doesn’t look over at his trainee. He doesn’t want to see the hurt look in those puppy dog eyes as he heads towards the most dangerous intersection in town. He’ll keep Tara busy with a few traffic stops until he can find an excuse to ditch her with reports back at the station. Then he’s fulfilled his promise to Hershel. A few calls and then he can find Shane and be done with it.


	3. Fate Can Be Annoying Like That

Apparently the universe is against Rick getting a little peace, because the residents of King County are unusually law-abiding. He can’t even find so much as a broken taillight to make a stop and _get Tara out of his car._ Finally, he dumps a stack of reports in her lap and tells her to get to work, suspending her speaking privileges until they’re finished for good measure. She still looks hurt, but he definitely can’t fault her on her obedience, because the only sound in the car is the pen scratching as he watches the road.

Rick is finally interrupted from his trance by the sound of footsteps on gravel. Muscles tensing in preparation, he rolls down the window, hand going to the gun by his side. Tara looks up in surprise, her eyes widening. “What-”

“Get ready to fire if you need to,” Rick orders, turning to face the man approaching their car. He’s alone, and doesn’t appear to be armed, but his bulky jacket might very well be concealing a weapon.

“He probably just wants directions-”

“Or he wants to shoot you!” Rick hisses, snapping over his shoulder before turning back to keep his eye on the man. “Can I help you, sir?”  
  


“There’s a car broken down on the side of the road,” the man answers, nodding towards the left. “Doesn’t look good. Didn’t want to get involved in case it’s not what it looks like, but it looks like someone’s unconscious.”

“Got it.” Rick picks up the radio, not taking his eye off the man. “10-53 on Greenmount Intersection, 10-76 now, possible injuries.” Tara stares at him like he’s speaking Chinese as he pulls away, scanning the road for the wreck.

“What did that mean…?” she asks, obviously nervous about speaking when she’s only halfway through the stack of paperwork he gave her.

“Don’t you know 10 codes?” Rick doesn’t glance over, flicking on the lights as the light turns red. 

“No - I mean, yes, I do, but - well…” Tara sighs, her voice uncharacteristically sheepish. “Dyscalculia. Number dyslexia. Can’t add ‘em, can’t subtract ‘em, and can’t memorize ‘em. I need a calculator for anything with double digits and I never learned my times table. 10 codes are…”

“Well, you’d better figure it out,” Rick says sharply, pulling over as he spots the stopped vehicle, a golden Expedition stalled in the shoulder. “Because I’m not letting anyone out of probation who doesn’t know radio codes.”

Tara blushes to the very roots of her dark hair, not meeting Rick’s gaze. “I - I’m sorry. I’m working on it.”

He feels worse than he should as he gets out to examine the scene.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rest of the day is paperwork and a few routine traffic stops. After having Tara accompany him on a few, he sends her out on her own, hand on his gun as he waits a few feet away, envisioning all the ways that this could go bad and this stop will be their last. But it doesn’t, and Tara writes out the warning before bouncing back over safely, already recovered from her embarrassment. His first impression of her had been a golden retriever puppy, and his new trainee is certainly living up to the comparison, with her big brown eyes, boundless energy, and eternal good mood.

They fill out the last of the reports together back at the station, Tara perched on the edge of his desk like a parrot. It’s been a long day, but she doesn’t even look tired, pigtails still bouncing as she nods her head to the distant music coming from Basset’s radio. Finally, they file the last of the paperwork and complete the car check, ensuring the first aid kit has been fully restocked, everything is in its place, and all systems are fully functional.

“Well,” Rick says finally, checking the clock. “Shift’s over, Officer Chambler. You’re free to go.”

“Hey.” Tara grins at him, hoisting her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for dragging me around. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow,” Rick sighs, already knowing that he’s stuck with her whether he likes it or not. At least if she’s with him, it’s not Basset trying to keep her alive and make her a halfway decent cop.

“Cool.” Tara offers him her fist, still grinning. “Pound it."

Rick stares at her for a moment, somewhat surprised. He shouldn’t be shocked that Tara is a fist-bumper, but...it just feels different. Something he hasn’t done since…

He snaps himself out of his reverie by lightly tapping his fist against hers. “Have a good night, Tara. I’d go to bed early if I were you, we’ve got the three to noon tomorrow.”

“I quit.”

“Little late for that.” Rick scoops up his own bag, heading for the door. “See you tomorrow, kid.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rick’s been working shifts at all hours since he was fresh out of school. Three a.m. means nothing to him anymore. He’s just as awake as if he was working a regular nine-to-five.

The same cannot be said for Tara.

“I’m fucking dead,” Tara mumbles, her eyes half-closed as she leans sleepily against his desk, sipping on a black iced coffee larger than her head. “I’m dead, Rick. I’m seriously not conscious.”

“Well, get that way.” Rick snaps his fingers under her nose, pulling her to her feet. “Come on, roll call. Try to look like you’re awake.”

Tara somehow passes roll call with her passable yet messy ponytail and deep circles under her eyes. Rick sends her to check the car while he grabs their gear, not trusting her to handle a gun while she’s this sleepy.

By the time he joins her in the car, Tara has knocked back half her coffee and is managing an acceptable impression of being awake, if not in a good mood. Rick smiles to himself as he enters a silent car. Maybe the secret to Tara’s mute button is early mornings and limited caffeine.

But of course it’s not that easy. With the rise of the sun comes the return of Tara’s bouncy personality and insatiable curiosity, and she’s hammering him with questions once more as he pulls out of the Peletier’s driveway, waving to Sophia on the porch.

“What’s the _weirdest_ thing you’ve ever had to do?” Is her most recent question, and while Rick has been trying to shut her down with grunts and monosyllables, there’s a real story behind that one, and maybe it’ll shut her up for a bit.

“I delivered Maggie Greene-Rhee’s baby in the women’s bathroom of a Waffle House,” Rick answers gruffly, turning the car.

Tara’s eyes widen to the size of half-dollars. “No _way._ ”

“Yes, way. Six years ago. Glenn Greene-Rhee called me in a panic at 3 a.m.; he’d taken his pregnant wife for midnight waffles because she was craving them, and she went into premature labor. By the time I got there, paramedics were on the way, but not fast enough, and the kid popped out.”

“Was everyone okay?” Of course that’s her first question. She may be annoying as hell, but she cares, that’s for sure.

“Yep. Kid’s fine; a little on the shrimpy side, but fine. They’re having another one in about three months.”

“Are they gonna have that one in Waffle House too?” And Rick almost snorts, because it’s an absolutely ridiculous question, but at the same time, Glenn and Maggie are definitely the couple to attempt to have both their children in the same restaurant, delivered by the same panicked, sleepy, and somewhat disgusted police officer. Glenn would find it hilarious.

“Wouldn’t put it past them,” Rick answers, moving around a turn. 

“You got any kids?” Tara asks, fixing her messy ponytail in the mirror. And her voice is so casual he knows she doesn’t know. 

“One,” Rick answers after a moment, and his voice is strained as he tenses his knuckles around the wheel. “Daughter. Her name’s Judith. She’s thirteen.”

“Cute,” Tara says, sipping on her coffee. “I bet you’re a good dad.”

_Dammit, Tara_ , but she doesn’t know, she can’t know, so Rick fights to keep his voice even as he speaks.

“I try. God knows, I try.”

Judith has walked home from school with Lizzie and Mika Samuels every day since she was seven. Because Rick is never there to pick her up. He’s working or sleeping or working again, and Lizzie Samuels leads Judith home just like she does her sister.

Her books are thrown haphazardly on the table, and there’s a pot of microwave macaroni waiting for him on the stove, the burner on low. And Judith is nowhere in sight. She’s up in her room, her earbuds in to drown out the world, just like she always is.

She’s had it hard, he knows. They both have. But no matter what he tries, he can’t get through to her. Can’t get more than monosyllables out of her. Can’t get her to the cemetery. The only place he can take her is to her mother’s house, and he’s never felt comfortable leaving her with Lori. He’s definitely not leaving her there any longer than the court says he has to.

Tara seems to sense how hard it is to talk about his family and falls silent, turning her attention to slurping the last dregs of her coffee through the ice at the bottom of the plastic cup. And silence reigns until the dispatcher’s voice crackles through the radio.

“We’ve got a report of an erratic driver on West, swerving through lanes, possibly intoxicated.”

“Got it. 10-76 10-18.” Rick turns to Tara, who’s just setting down her cup. “Hit the sirens.”

“Aye-aye, Captain!” And the siren starts wailing as they race through the streets, almost alone on the road as the clock ticks over to 4:00 a.m.


	4. No One Gets to Call Her a Bitch Except Me

_ Judith’s squeals echo through the house as Carl’s boots pound on the floors. They’re playing tag inside again. Rick swore he’d take away every electronic in the house if they did it again, but it’s Judith’s tenth birthday and his children play together, even twelve years apart, and Lori doesn’t even seem bothered, her head leaning on his shoulder as she adds the last few dabs of frosting to Judith’s cake. _

_ Rick had given his old hat to Carl when he’d outgrown it, and Carl had promised Judith she’d have it for her tenth birthday. It’s all she’s been able to talk about for weeks, and all she wanted on the cake was a replica of the hat. And Lori had managed, absolutely outdone herself with a well-molded fondant sheriff’s hat, frosted over with rich chocolate buttercream. _

_ “It’s beautiful,” Rick tells her, wrapping his arms around her to nuzzle her neck. “She’ll love it.” _

_ “She’d better,” Lori remarks, setting down her piping bag. “This is the longest I’ve ever spent on a cake. Even longer than Carl’s  _ IT  _ cake last year.” _

_ “That was a true work of art,” Rick tells her, pressing a kiss to her hair. “Should I call the kids?” _

_ “Go ahead, get ‘em in here,” Lori tells him, so Rick calls them, and then they come running, but something’s wrong, and everything is red- _

“Hello? Earth to Grimes?” Rick snaps back to the present to see Tara waving a hand in front of his face, confused and a little frightened.

“Yeah?” he mumbles, mopping the sweat that’s broken out on his forehead away on his sleeve, wincing at the feel of that  _ damn hat  _ on his head.

“Rick, there’s a road rage incident going on up there and it looks really bad but I’m not allowed to make arrests-”

Rick looks out the windshield, and sure enough, two men are out of their vehicles on the side of the road, a trucker and a welder from the looks of it. There’s a knife out, and both of their faces are scarlet and twisted with rage. Tara’s right, it looks bad.

“Come on,” he tells her, trying to ignore the confused hesitancy with which she eyes him. “I’ll break it up, you watch the guy without the knife while I make the arrest.”

Tara nods assent, hand on her gun as she follows him out of the car. Rick could have kicked himself. What was he thinking, spacing out behind the wheel like that? It would have been one thing if he’d been with Shane, but he was with an inexperienced rookie in her first week and both of them could have been killed while he was zoned out.

Rick slaps his cuffs on the man who pulled the knife, pulling the blade safely out of reach. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

“Get off me, asshole!” the man snarls, twisting futilely in the cuffs. “I’ll sue you for this!”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Rick mutters, hauling him towards the squad car. “Tara, you good?”   
  


“Fine,” Tara calls back, but her voice shakes a little, and Rick spins around to see her with her gun up, pointed directly at the other man involved in the scene.

“Tara, what-” Rick shoves the first man into the car and bolts over, and then he gets close enough to hear what made Tara draw her gun.

“Fucking bitch, I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll fucking beat your head in-” And it goes on and on until Rick comes up behind him and slaps a second pair of cuffs on his wrists. 

“You’re being charged with criminal threat and delaying a police officer.  You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

“What the hell am I being arrested for? Haven’t you ever heard of free speech?” The man thrashes in Rick’s grip, swinging wildly at Tara, who still hasn’t lowered the gun.

“You’re about to get resisting arrest and attempted assault added to your list of charges,” Rick warns him, pulling his hands behind his back to keep them away from Tara. “Come on, into the car. Tara, you can put the gun down.”

She lowers it slowly, holstering it once more before pulling open the door to make room for the new passenger. Rick shoves him in before shutting the divider between his and Tara’s seats and the men, giving them privacy and cutting him off from threatening her anymore. He still doesn’t want her on the job, definitely doesn’t want to spend any more time with her, but something still boils in his blood at the things he threatened to do to Tara.

“You okay?” he asks, slamming the door behind him. Tara sinks into her seat, unscrewing the cap of her water bottle for a drink. 

“It was...not fine,” she mumbles, staring at her shoes instead of meeting Rick’s eyes. “Thanks for stopping it. I didn’t want to pull the gun but he just kept getting closer…”

“That’s what it’s there for,” Rick tells her, pulling the car off the side of the road. “To keep you alive. He was threatening your life. If you need that gun, you take it out, got it?”

Tara nods, setting her water bottle down. “Back to the station now?”

“Yep. Gotta drop these two off and fill out the reports. And then we’ve got someone to pick up.”


	5. Fun With Handcuffs (No, Not Like That)

“We’re just gonna arrest him in the hospital?”

“Exactly. We’ll cuff him in the hallway and they can wheel him out if they want, and then we’ll take him in. You wanna read off the rights this time?”

“Really?” Tara squeals like a little kid who was just handed a puppy, and he can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. Better than a trainee who couldn’t care less.

“Really. You know ‘em?”

Tara reels off the Miranda rights to the letter, clearly having spent some quality time with her textbook in the academy. “Perfect,” Rick tells her, parking outside the hospital. “I can’t let you cuff him, but you give him the charges and his rights. You ready?”

“I was  _ born  _ ready.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“He was cleared to leave this morning,” the orderly tells them, leading them down a long hallway. “He’s still banged up but the internal bleeding has been repaired. The stitches will dissolve on their own; he shouldn’t need to come back unless complications arise.”

“How do we know if complications arise?” Tara asks, practically hopping every few steps to keep up with Rick’s long strides.

“Unusual pain, swelling, signs of infection, or anything that worries you,” the orderly tells them. “Better safe than sorry. Give us a call if you’re not sure.”

Rick pulls his cuffs out, stopping outside the door. “You remember the charges?”

“Driving under the influence and negligent homicide,” Tara replies, bouncing a little on her heels with excitement, or maybe nervousness, it’s hard to tell. “Is that everything?”   
  


“That’s all we can hit him with,” Rick answers grimly, pushing the door open. “Let’s go.”

Their man is in a room alone, the curtains pushed back, revealing his red, puffy eyes and snotty nose. His face and arms are still marred with green and yellow contusions, still days away from healing. He’s got a cast on one arm and bandages wrapped tightly around his waist. His eyes widen in terror as they approach, cuffs swinging from Rick’s hand.

“Austin Manning, you have been charged by the state of Georgia with driving under the influence and negligent homicide.” Tara’s voice is strong as she strides up to the bed, and her face is stony as she stares down at the now-whimpering man. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

“No, no, please, it was an accident-”

“You have the right to an attorney.” And Tara is still unyielding, cold and hard and stern in the face of desperate pleading for mercy. “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

“Please, you have to understand, it was an accident-”

“Do you understand the rights I have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?” And Tara’s eyes are hard as she stares down, as mean as Rick’s ever seen her.

He didn’t think Tara could be so cold. But he’ll have to remember this. As sweet and innocent as she seems, there’s a lot more to Tara Chambler under the surface.

The cuffs clink as he clicks them into place. Tara doesn’t flinch.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You look like you just bit into a lemon,” Rick tells her as he hands her the stack of reports for the arrest. 

“Do not.”

“Do too.” It’s kind of fun to annoy Tara. Give her a taste of her own medicine. 

“Well, maybe I’m mad.”

“Mad about what?” Rick settles into his chair, spinning slowly from side to side as he studies the report from the road rage incident.

“The burning of the library of Alexandria.”

“So now  _ you’re  _ not talking?”

“Maybe I don’t feel like talking.”

“Tara, you have done nothing except talk my ear off since the day you met me.”

“Well, then I’m overdue.”

Rick leaves her be after that; the tightness in her voice has reached a dangerous edge. If he knows Tara at all, and he’s fairly certain he does, she’ll crack in a few minutes and spill everything.

And he’s right. After a few minutes of pens scratching on paper, Tara throws her pencil down, glaring up at the ceiling. “How can someone get wasted, start driving, kill two people, and start pleading for mercy because it was an  _ accident? _ ”

And  _ there  _ it is. Rick leans back in his chair, studying the ceiling as well. “I don’t know. Do you think he killed them on purpose?”

“No, but-”

“Then it was an accident. And that’s why we charged for criminally negligent homicide instead of murder.”

“But it  _ was,  _ it was murder-”

“It wasn’t intentional. Therefore it wasn’t murder.”

“But he  _ killed _ them -” 

“Which is why we charged him with criminally negligent  _ homicide. _ ”

“Rick, he killed a twelve-year-old kid and he called it an  _ accident!  _ He begged us to let him go!”

“Correct. And we didn’t let him go.”

“But-”

Rick cuts her off with a raised hand, not looking away from the ceiling. “Kid, do yourself a favor and stop getting worked up over people being assholes. You’re gonna be pissed off every day of your life if you don’t. You did your job, you did it right, and you did it well. Be happy with that.”

Tara doesn’t speak again, but the anger isn’t coming off her in waves anymore. The scratching of her pen resumes, and Rick flips the next page of his report.

Sometimes words just get in the way.


	6. Teenagers Are Difficult 101

Tara sucks hard on the straw of her towering iced coffee. Rick has stopped questioning the size of her cups, although he privately still worries for her health. That much caffeine at the rate she downs it  _ cannot  _ be good for the human heart.

“So,” Tara says around her straw, not taking her eyes off the traffic light they’re watching. “My wife’s been talking, and she wants to do dinner, get to know some people.”

Rick snaps around to face her, startled by her words.  _ Wife?  _

It had never crossed his mind that Tara might be gay. The possibility had just never seemed real. But then again, he hadn’t really imagined her with a man either; honestly, he’d just figured Tara lived alone with her dog. At most, a roommate. The idea of a  _ wife  _ just doesn’t click.

“Um...Rick? Everything okay…?” And then Rick snaps out of it to see Tara eyeing him nervously, her eyes round with anxiety as her hand moves towards the door. It hits him then that Tara probably thinks he hates her now, and the fact that he’s carrying a gun probably isn’t helping, nor is his piercing stare directly into her eyes.

Finally, Rick sputters it out, still struggling to wrap his head around this new information. “You’re - you’re  _ married? _ ”

Tara actually giggles out loud, the tension draining from her body. “Yes! I have a  _ wife!  _ I know, right, I kinda can’t believe it either, but a woman married  _ me  _ and now I have a  _ wife! _ ”

“But - but you don’t have a ring!” Rick stammers, staring at Tara’s hand. It’s completely bare of jewelry, not even an engagement ring.

“Yeah.” Tara grins, pulling a silver chain out of the neckline of her uniform. Dangling around the end is a beautiful diamond ring, shining like she polishes it everyday, which Rick has to admit is something Tara would do. “Started wearing it under the uniform when I went into the academy, wanted to make sure nothing happened to it. And I just keep it on the necklace, you know - I  _ am  _ in rural Georgia, I figured it’s probably better to keep the gay thing on the down-low. Plus…” And then she blushes like a schoolgirl, twirling the chain around her finger. “I think the necklace is more romantic anyway. It’s over my heart.”

“You are ridiculous,” Rick tells her, giving her arm a well-meaning flick. “So, your wife wants to…?”

“Yeah, she wants to do a dinner party,” Tara continues, eyes still fixated on her ring. “She’s invited the Peletiers, and Glenn and Maggie and their kid, and she wants to meet you too. You can bring your whole family, kids are fine...just need a headcount.”

“Was that your subtle way of trying to find out if I’m married?” Rick snorts, turning his attention back to the road. 

Tara somehow blushes even deeper. “I mean, I really do need to know how many people...but I’m not going to deny that I’m curious.”

“Well, let me end that now. I was married, once, and now I am not. Judith goes back and forth between houses. I’ll definitely bring her with me, it’ll be good for her to get out of the house.” Rick speaks without thinking and immediately cringes afterwards, but luckily, if Tara noticed, she doesn’t comment.

“Cool. I’ll let her know tonight.” Tara slurps the last of her coffee, rattling the ice at the bottom with disappointment. “Hey, Rick?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“What exactly did you  _ think  _ my personal life included?”

“Uh…” Rick hides a grin from her as he pulls off the shoulder. “I take the Fifth.”

Tara laughs and swats him, and as he revs the engine all he can think about is how maybe this time can be different. Having Tara around definitely isn’t nearly as terrible as he’d thought it’d be, after all.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The familiar nervousness that comes with approaching his daughter is brewing viciously as Rick taps on Judith’s door, doubting she can hear him over the music blasting from her radio.

“Judith? Can I come in?” Scuffling, and then the music turns down a little. 

“Sure,” Judith replies, and she doesn’t sound mad or stressed or sad, just apathetic, and somehow her not caring hurts more than if she screamed and slammed the door in his face.

Rick lightly pushes open the door and there she is, sprawled out on her bed engrossed in one of Carl’s hand-me-down comic books, sheriff’s hat balanced on her pretty dark hair. She got Lori’s looks, fortunately for her; but he likes to think her temper is all him. That’s why they always clash, they’re too much alike.

“I’ve got the day off tomorrow.” Judith lifts her head a little, peeking over the edge of the comic.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rick affirms, sinking down slowly into her desk chair. Judith’s room always looks like a tornado has just blown through, and her desk is no exception. Books and papers are piled everywhere, pencils rolling loose across the floor. It’s a miracle she can find her homework every morning, much less turn it in.

“I’ll take you to school and pick you up tomorrow, okay?”

“What’s the catch?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s the catch?’” Rick asks, blinking in surprise. He was expecting apathy, hoping for surprised excitement; judgement and exasperation have come completely out of the blue.

“I mean, what’s the catch? Are you gonna make me babysit for the police ball again? No, that’s not till May...what’s the catch?”

“No catch,” Rick promises, spinning absently in her chair. “The only thing I’ve got planned is something at my…” He stalls for a moment there, unsure of what to call Tara. They’re not friends, that’s for sure; but coworker sounds too stiff and formal, and trainee even worse. Finally he settles for shifting gears completely, dodging the question of exactly who Tara is to him for now. “Someone from work is having a dinner party, and we’re going. That’s it.”

Judith huffs a sigh, and Rick is painfully reminded of how much she sounds like him. How much she acts like him. “Knew it.  _ Dinner party?  _ Really?”

“It’ll be fun,” Rick promises. “Sophia’s coming, and Hershel, and you’ll like Tara. I really think you will.”

He’s not lying when he says it. Tara’s good with kids, and she’s got the exact personality to draw Judith out of the shell she’s made for herself over the past three years. She’s the right combination of ridiculous and mature to make Judith feel like an adult while making adulthood not entirely boring, and frankly, he’d like Judith to have some female influences other than Lori in her life.

Judith makes a face. “ _ Tara.  _ I bet she’s sixty years old and smells like cats and cigarettes. I bet she watches reruns of  _ I Love Lucy  _ and that’s  _ it.  _ And I bet she has a boring old husband that won’t shut up about Reagan.”

Rick struggles to stifle a laugh at that description, a mental image of Tara as a crazy cat lady married to a rambling old man entering his brain. “Just give her a chance. We’re leaving at five.”

“Whatever.” And with that, Rick is suddenly outside and Judith’s music is shaking the floor of their miserably empty two-story home and another attempt to get through to her is lying weak and dead in the dust.

And the worst part is that it wasn’t always like this.

Three years ago everything was fine. Judith still talked. Lori was still here. And Carl…

Carl hurts too much to think about.

So Rick sighs and brushes away memories of a happier time and goes to his closet. He hasn’t been to a dinner party in three years, and he has no idea what he’s going to wear.


	7. Come In, We Have Red Wine and Fancy Cheese Platters

Judith sits in the passenger seat of Rick’s truck, arms folded in disgust and disappointment. She did as she was told and cleaned herself up, wearing a clean pair of unripped jeans and a T-shirt that has been washed sometime in the past century. The hat is still balanced on her head, but tipped forward over her eyes so no one can see into her face. Rick sighs, tightening his knuckles on the steering wheel.

“Judith-”

“No.”

And then he’s quiet again, not sure how to approach the great divide between him and the only family he’s got left.

Tara’s house is on the edge of town, not too far from the Greene-Rhee farm, owned and operated by Maggie and Glenn. It’s somehow nothing like Rick was expecting and perfectly Tara-like all at once, a small brown brick bungalow set about twenty feet back from the road. Warm and welcoming light pours from the big window set in the foremost part of the house, allowing a glimpse into a well-furnished living room before sloping upwards into a triangular attachment to the angled roof. Smoke rises from the stone chimney, suggesting a crackling fire burning inside. Mock candles burn in lanterns on the porch, lighting up the columns Rick can already tell Tara decorated herself, white as the background with slender lines of paint tracing their way up the posts like thin snakes. 

And then she throws open the door, and Rick realizes it’s the first time he’s ever seen Tara out of uniform. She looks good, her dark hair hanging free down to her shoulders, contrasting well with her plain white top and dark jeans. A massive black Great Dane follows her, his head nearly coming up to her shoulder, and somehow Rick doesn’t even question why Tara owns the biggest dog she could find. “Hey, Rick. Come on, we’ve got wine and really fancy cheese!”

And at that moment Rick is treated to Judith’s jaw practically hitting the floor as she tips her hat back to see better. “Wait... _ you’re  _ Tara?”

“Last time I checked,” Tara answers cheerfully, reaching out to shake Judith’s hand. It’s a good move, one Rick mentally thanks her for; she’s already treating his daughter as an equal. “Judith, right?”   
  


“Mm-hmm,” Judith agrees, her eyes still as wide as half-dollars. “You’re not... _ old. _ ”

“I’m twenty-four, I’d hope not,” Tara agrees, nodding without a trace of mockery. “Hurry up, the overly fancy cheese will not devour itself.”

Inside already are Carol Peletier in her Sunday dress, Daryl Dixon, looking unusually clean - Carol must have hosed him down beforehand - the Greene-Rhees, and Sophia, sporting her Georgia Tech hoodie and absolutely sparkling Doc Martens. Usually Judith would be practically in her lap by now, hammering her with questions about college life, but today she only waves at everyone else before continuing to follow Tara around like a little dog, ponytail bouncing underneath the hat.

“Babe, they’re here!” Tara calls over her shoulder. “I know you love Hershel, but you gotta come say hi!”

There’s some shuffling from behind the couch, and then a woman straightens up, Maggie and Glenn’s six-year-old son Hershel bolting away a moment later, giggling. She’s obviously of Latina descent, rich brown hair flowing down her back. There’s a thin red scar running down her cheek, and as she steps out from behind the couch, her red dress reveals her left leg to be amputated at the knee, replaced by a sleek prosthetic. “This,” Tara exclaims proudly, practically glowing, “is my  _ wife,  _ Rosita.”

“You must be Rick,” Rosita says, extending her hand, rolling her eyes a little at the enthusiasm and joy Tara puts into the word  _ wife.  _ “I’m Rosita. I married this fool last year before we moved out here and she’s apparently still not over it.”

“How could I ever be over it?” Tara gushes, gazing at Rosita in pure awe. “I’m married to a goddess. I’m married to Aphrodite herself. My wife is an Amazon queen. I am without a doubt the most blessed woman in the world.”   
  


“Yeah, you clearly need some more wine,” Rosita mumbles, but she blushes pink at the praise, and the love in her eyes is obvious, if a bit more subtle than Tara’s open adoration, as she looks at her wife. 

“Come on, help us get rid of this cheese,” Tara orders, pointing towards a platter of cheese and crackers on the coffee table. 

Rosita sighs, rolling her amber eyes again. “I made the mistake of sending Tara to the grocery store alone, and she came back with a cheese platter intended for thirty. I swear I married a five-year-old.”

“Do not underestimate my cheese-eating abilities!” Tara calls, halfway to the kitchen to bring more wine. 

In a house containing Maggie, Glenn, Tara, a wild six-year-old, a moody teenager, and a man who eats possums like they’re prime rib, Rosita is a refreshing change. If Tara is a puppy, Rosita is a Siamese cat. She’s dignified, mature, responsible, laid-back, and sensible - everything Tara needs to keep her stable. Even after just a few minutes, Rick can already see how good they are for each other. Rosita keeps Tara together and makes her slow down and think, and Tara is there to bring the joy, the ridiculousness, and the impulsiveness to their home. They’re a perfect match, compromising where they need to to fit together like puzzle pieces.

He and Lori were never like that, not even in their best days. He was too stiff, too focused, too driven, and Lori was free-wheeling, relaxed, and carefree. They never adapted to each other, never learned to compromise, and it only got worse when they had kids, when Carl and Judith looked like Lori but became like Rick. Carl’s birth was when what little they’d managed to build started to crumble, if he’s being honest.

“I’m a vet,” Rosita tells him when the conversation turns to career. “Honorable discharge after an IED took the leg in Iraq. I got sent back over and Tara’s sister Lilly was assigned to my case - that was before she went into oncology. It was a bad time, I was really struggling to adapt - then she introduced me to Tara. And she was - God, Tara was everything.” Watching Rosita lovingly watch a wine-drunk Tara wrestle their Great Dane, Kevin - Rick is almost certain he knows who named him - he knows Lilly made a good choice.

And then he hears it. A sound he’d recognize anywhere, even if he hasn’t heard it in years. Judith is giggling, giggling uncontrollably like only Carl could ever make her, rolling around on the floor with Tara and Kevin and laughing until tears are in her eyes as the big dog flops on top of her.

Every bad thing Rick has ever thought about Tara is gone in a flash as he watches Judith laugh, playing like the child she is instead of sitting still and silent, staring up at the ceiling and drowning out the world in her earbuds. Because Tara has brought her back, even if it’s only just for tonight, and it’s the Judith he raised as best he could in the Chamblers’ house tonight instead of the stranger who’s taken her place.

Rosita grins, and there’s a trace of knowing in her eyes as she watches Tara and Judith. “Tara loves kids. Bring her over any time, Kevin could use the exercise and she’s a great kid.”

Before Rick can reply around the sudden lump in his throat, the doorbell rings, throwing him off his train of thought. “I got it,” Rosita calls, already hopping towards the door. 

“Oh, hey, Michonne! We’re not being too loud, are we?”

Rick looks over at the door and is instantly struck dumb in a way he’s never felt before, a fluttery feeling that feels suspiciously like butterflies in his stomach as he stares at the new arrival.

It’s a woman - Michonne, Rosita said - the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life. She’s nearly as tall as he is, slender and graceful, her hair shaved on one side and long dreadlocks on the other. She smiles at Rosita, revealing sparkly white teeth, and time seems to slow down around her smile. All he can see is Michonne, the other’s voices fading away into dull background noise as he gazes at this woman.

This absolute goddess of a woman.

God, he sounds exactly like Tara. And maybe that’s not an entirely bad thing.

In the daze brought on by being hit with the blinding ray of light that is Michonne, he barely hears the phrase “borrow an egg” and then just like that she’s gone, and the world seems a little dimmer than before.

Rosita smirks as she turns back to him, and he realizes that his mouth is literally hanging open. “Michonne’s our neighbor. Lives just down the road. So how about bringing Judith back, hmm?” Obviously amused by his stunned look, she grins even wider, leaning against the back of the couch. “She’s single…”

_ Finally, some good news. _


	8. I Know, Women Are Awesome, Right? (I Am A Lesbian)

“Oh my God, you _totally_ have to ask her out!”

“Kid, I’ve never even spoken to her,” Rick mutters, feeling extremely betrayed by Rosita as Tara slams him with questions about Michonne. 

“I could introduce you.”

“Listen, Tara, I don’t need any help managing my love life.”

“Except you _do._ Rosita said you needed help getting your jaw up off the floor,” Tara snorts, kicking off a filing cabinet to send his desk chair into a spin. 

“Yeah, well, what does Rosita know?” Rick mumbles, putting a hand on the back of the chair to stop it before Tara crashes into something. 

“Everything. She knows everything because she’s the best,” Tara says seriously. “And she knows that you _love_ her.”

“I do not _love_ her.”

Tara grins, making kissy noises at him. “You’re gonna get married. _Rick and Michonne sitting in a tree…”_

“Okay, we are definitely _not_ getting married.”

“You should.” Tara pushes off the file cabinet again, grinning at him. “Michonne’s a real catch. Smart, single, _great_ jugs…”

“Have you looked?”

“Kinda hard not to, Rick.” 

“Fair enough. Why do you even care?”

“Because it’d be fun. Come on, we could double date.”

“Tara, you’re already married.”

“Uh...yeah? I’d take Rosita?” Tara rolls her eyes at him, smacking into the edge of the desk as she spins. 

“You take your _wife_ on dates?”

“You don’t?” Tara shakes her head at him, obviously disappointed. “God, being straight sounds miserable.”

On the desk, the radio buzzes. Tara dodges Rick’s hand, snatching it up just in time to get it away from him. “Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?”

The dispatcher’s voice crackles through the speaker. “Let me guess, Tara?”

“How’d you guess?” Tara pulls the radio out of Rick’s reach, mouthing “sorry not sorry” at him. “What’s the sitch?”

“Report of child abuse in a home outside city limits. Reporter made it sound pretty bad. Adults might be armed, drugs are probably involved. Sending Walsh and Basset as well.”

“Grab your gear,” Rick orders, plucking the radio from Tara’s hand. “This is Officer Grimes, we’re heading out now. Tell Shane and Basset we’ll meet ‘em outside.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Easy,” Rick murmurs, placing his hand on Tara’s arm to hold her back. “We don’t know who’s in here, or what their weapons look like. Shane, Basset, go right, sweep the kitchen. Tara and I will find the kids.”

“Do we know how many?” Tara mutters through clenched teeth, hand on her gun.   
  


“Three at least,” Rick answers, placing his hand on the door. “We grab the kids and go, got it? Basset and Shane will do the arresting. Ready?”

Three nods, Tara’s a little stiffer than he’d like. Rick takes a deep breath and gives the door a push.

The hinges moan as the door creaks open. Rick is immediately hit with the stench of rotting human waste and vomit oozing from the dilapidated shack, making his eyes water at the smell. “King County Police! Come into the hall with your hands up!”

Nothing, for a few moments. Then a thin, pitiful wail breaks the silence, high, piercing, and terrified. 

And then Rick is knocked into the wall, shoved hard from behind, and Tara is in the hall, her gun out as she charges into the house. “Tara! Tara, get back here!” Rick barks, anxiety coursing through his veins. _Not again, not again, not again…_

“There’s a baby in here!” Tara shouts back, her boots slamming against the creaking floors as she searches for the children. Rick sighs, worry for Tara brewing in his gut as he turns to the other officers.

“New plan. I’ll follow Tara. See if you can find whoever did this.” Nods, guns are drawn, and then Rick is on Tara’s trail, following the echoes of her pounding footsteps.

The house smells miserable. Rats and roaches alike scurry across the rotting floorboards. The walls are smeared with feces and blood, human urine puddled in the corners. More cries and pleas have joined the wailing baby, children no more than five or six by the sound of it.

And then Rick turns and finds Tara on her hands and knees in a filthy room the size of his closet back home, fiddling with the lock of a cage with a bobby pin she must have pulled from her hair. It’s literally a dog kennel, a baby no more than three months old weeping inside, and it’s so thin and weak, covered in festering sores…

The lock clicks open and Tara throws open the cage, gathering the baby into her arms. “Shh...shh, I gotcha...you’re safe with me…”

“Anyone else in here?” Rick asks gruffly, and Tara’s head snaps around in surprise. 

“Don’t think so,” she murmurs, eyes downcast and cheeks flushed, shame coming off her in waves. “Listen, Rick, I’m sorry, I know it was stupid, I just-”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Rick cuts her off, pulling her to her feet. “For now, come on. We’ve gotta find the rest of these kids.”

He takes the left side of the long hall while Tara takes the right, rocking the whimpering baby as she scans each room. Rick is just about to give up and head to the second floor, struggling to track the overlapping voices, when Tara calls “down here!”

He runs down the hall, hurrying to her side, to find Tara once again on her hands and knees, the baby wrapped up in her jacket and cradled on the floor as she picks the lock on a chain around a child’s wrist.

The floor is covered in filth and insects, maggots buzzing in the open wounds on the children’s flesh. There’s two of them, a boy and a girl, no more than six years old, both chained to the wall. Their hair is cropped short and greasy, their skin filthy and covered in sores like the ones on the baby. Rick rushes to the other child, hurrying to break the cuff. By his side, he can just hear Tara murmuring to the little girl.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay now. My name is Tara, and this is my friend Rick. We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”

The cuff snaps open and Tara scoops up the little girl in one arm and the baby in the other. “We go to the car now?”

Rick nods, prying open the cuff on the boy’s wrist. “Shane and Basset will deal with documentation. We’ve got to get them to the hospital, now.”

Tara nods, and then she’s gone, leaving Rick alone with the little boy. He’s young, and scrawny, obviously dehydrated and malnourished, blinking distrustfully up at Rick.

“Hey,” Rick murmurs, slipping back a little. “My name is Rick, okay? And that was my friend Tara, with your sister. We’re here to help, we’re police officers. We’re going to take you somewhere safe-”

And then he’s being crushed in a hug, thin arms wrapped around his neck. Startled by the sudden trust, Rick scoops him up easily, wincing at how obviously every rib protrudes under the thin rags draped over his body. “I’ve got you, kid,” Rick promises, starting the walk to the car. “I’ve got you.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tara settles into the back of the car with both kids and the baby, her arms wrapped protectively around all of them. Rick’s never seen her look so angry or so heartbroken before.

“What’re your names?” he hears her ask from the front, clinging to the baby as if her embrace might provide some healing. 

“We don’t have names,” the little boy rasps, his head lolling on Tara’s shoulder, too malnourished to hold it up. “Mama never called us anything…”

Even in the rearview mirror, it isn’t lost on Rick how hard Tara swallows at that, hugging both children a little tighter. She wrapped them in the fire blankets in the trunk to keep their freezing bodies as warm as she could, but they’re still shaking.

“What do you wanna be called?” she asks, her face changing for just a moment before she recollects herself, fingers gently stroking the greasy fuzz on the back of the baby’s head.

“What are you called?” the girl pipes up, her voice so weak from under the blanket. 

“Tara,” she tells them again, her voice soft as she draws them even closer. “Tara Primrose Chambler.”

And it’s the first he’s heard of _Primrose,_ but Rick keeps quiet for now, watching in the rearview mirror. 

“I wanna be called Primrose,” the little girl decides, her head lolling sleepily in Tara’s lap. “Like you...like pretty flowers…”

“Okay,” Tara says softly, her voice hitching in her throat. “Okay, Primrose.”

“I wanna be called Spaghetti-O’s,” the boy informs her, and Tara makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. 

“We’ll work on it,” she tells him, tucking the fire blanket tighter around him.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Doctors are already waiting for them as they pull up to St. Margaret Mary Children’s Hospital. The boy - whom Rick cannot stop thinking of as Spaghetti-O’s - hops out of the car willingly, but Primrose latches onto Tara, wailing at the sight of so many strangers.

“Okay, okay,” Tara murmurs, kneeling on the sidewalk to look her in the eye. “It’s okay. They’re doctors, they’re here to help, they’ll fix you up-”

“I don’t want you to go!” Primrose wails, clinging to Tara like a baby koala. “I want you to stay, I want to stay with you forever!”

“I know, I know, but you have to go with the doctors…” Tears are welling in Tara’s eyes as she clutches Primrose’s hands. “Please, baby girl, I need you to be brave for me and let them help you…”

“And then you’ll come back?” Primrose is near tears too, clinging to Tara just as tightly. “I wanna live with you…”

“I know, I wish I could come back, but I can’t.” Tara muffles a sob, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “No one’s going to hurt you, I promise you, you’re safe now, you don’t need me. You’re going to be okay.”

“Don’t go!” Primrose wails, but then a doctor scoops her up nimbly and starts to carry her away, and her screams do no good as she disappears into the hospital, vanishing into a crowd of white scrubs.

“Tara…” Rick has never felt so lost in his life. His trainee kneels still on the filthy sidewalk, staring down at the cracks in the pavement, trembling despite the lack of a chill. “Tara, we…”

His hand touches her shoulder and Tara collapses against his legs like a marionette with all her strings cut, hot tears already flowing freely. And then he realizes that the baby in her arms is gone, and it wasn’t transferred to a doctor, but to the autopsy technician from the basement, and in the distance he can just see the outline of a little foot as it’s carried away into the basement.

The baby must have died in Tara’s arms. 

Rick drops down to sit on the dirty sidewalk beside her without a moment’s hesitation, pulling her into his arms despite the flood of tears. Tara sinks into him, clutching at his uniform as she buries her head into his tan shirt, breaking down fully in his arms outside the hospital. He gathers her in, gently stroking her dark hair back with calloused fingers, and it’s as he cradles her in the street that an old memory resurfaces, a song he used to hum to Judith and Carl when they cried. A song he hums for his children.

And now he hums it for Tara.


	9. Don't Talk To Me Or My Son Ever Again

Seeing Tara silent, red-eyed, and heartbroken is well out of Rick’s depth, so as soon as she stops sobbing, he scoops her up and returns her to the car. He’s decided as her mentor and most senior officer on scene that Tara’s shift is over for the day and she’s taking tomorrow off as well. If Hershel gets pissed he can deal with that. He’s not taking her out anyway, not in this state.

“Where are we going?” Tara rasps out hoarsely, her voice still thick with tears.

“Home,” Rick says simply, turning towards her street. “You’re off today and tomorrow. Take care of yourself, spend some time with your wife, give Kevin a pat for me. Come back Wednesday, and come back ready to work, okay?”

And even Tara isn’t willing to try to claim that she can work like this, because she nods silently and returns to staring at the floor, her face blotchy red.

Rosita must have seen the squad car pull up, because her face is pale and her eyes are wide as she rushes outside, rapping on the window. “What’s the matter? Is Tara okay?”

“She will be.” Rick opens the door, nodding towards Tara in the passenger seat. “Pretty bad case of child abuse today. A kid died in her arms on the way to St. Margaret Mary, and another was begging her not to leave...doctors had to pry the kid off her.”

Rosita nods, and Rick is reminded again of why she’s so good for Tara, because she’s calm when no one else is and she keeps her head screwed on straight. “Kids are...a sensitive topic for Tara. She’s gonna need some time.”

“I gave her today and tomorrow off.”

“Good, she’ll need it,” Rosita tells him, nodding towards a freshly-teary Tara in the car. “But I don’t mean just like that. She’s not - not gonna be _Tara_ for a little while, if you know what I mean.”

“I get it.” Rick opens the car door, offering Tara a hand to pull her out. She’s still shaking as he lends her his support. And then he passes her off to Rosita, but not before squeezing her shoulder. “See you Wednesday, kid.”

Rosita gives him a grateful look, thanking him with her eyes, before pressing a kiss to Tara’s cheek, wrapping a strong, slender arm around her shoulders. And then Rick turns the key and drives away, leaving them standing behind him in the yard.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We need to talk about Chambler.”

Rick looks up from the report he’s been filing, a little startled. He’s gotten more work done on this shift than he has since he took on Tara, that’s undeniable, but he’s gotten used to her spinning his chair and racing him for the radio and making smart-ass comments every chance she gets. It’s too quiet without her.

It’s Shane, and Rick realizes with a start that he hasn’t had a one-on-one with the man he calls his best friend in over a week. Since Tara took his place in the squad car, he just hasn’t been seeing Shane.

“She’s a good kid, Shane.”

“She’s stupid, is what she is,” Shane snaps back, leaning against the filing cabinet, scuffed with Tara’s bootmarks. “That bull yesterday, charging in by herself like that? We all could have died!”

“I talked to her about it.”

“Because talking gets through to her? Rick, she’s immature, she’s irresponsible, and someone’s gonna get killed because of it, maybe her, maybe you. You really feel safe going out on patrol with that?”

Rick sighs, setting the report down on the desk with a little more force than he really needed. “Shane, she’s twenty-four years old. When we were twenty-four, you stumbled shitfaced into the Greenes’ hog pen and rolled around in pig shit with a pregnant sow until Hershel dragged you out on your ass and threw you in the cell around the corner to sober up. He should have fired you then?”

Shane glares at him, knuckles white on the edge of an open cabinet. “This is different-”

“Yeah, Shane, I think it is, because the last time I checked, Chambler’s a little immature, but harmless, and you nearly crushed a knocked-up pig.”

“And that bullshit yesterday? That was _harmless?_ ”

“She heard kids screaming for help and risked her own life to save theirs. Was it a smart decision? No. But it was a brave one, and a damn noble one, and she’s certainly no shame to the uniform for making it.” Rick abandons all pretense of preoccupation, staring into Shane’s eyes with all the ferocity he can muster. “A baby died in her arms yesterday. A damn _baby._ And if I hear anything about you or anyone else giving her a hard time, you’ll have me to answer to.”

Shane rolls his eyes in disgust, snorting as he turns away. “You’re going soft, Rick. Soft for a damn rookie.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tara comes back Wednesday on time, her eyes free of redness and her face remarkably composed. Rick starts to call a greeting, but she cuts him off, slamming the door to his office behind her as she strides up to perch on the edge of his desk.

“Rosita and I are trying to have a baby.”

Before Rick can answer, before he can even fully process this new information, Tara continues, her voice dull and devoid of emotion, and he gets the sense that if she starts feeling now she’ll start crying all over again.

“We’ve been trying for two years and it’s failed six times. As of last Friday.”

“Tara-”

“I can’t do it. My family has a history of serious reproductive issues - Meghan nearly killed my sister - and I had a hysterectomy after I found out my risk for uterine cancer was nearly sixty percent. It’s got to be Rosita, and it’s just not working. It’s starting to sink in that it’s probably never going to.”

“Kid-”

“We can’t adopt. Because of the bomb. It took Rosita’s leg and gave her some vision loss and some shell-shock. _We_ know she wouldn’t hurt a kid, and she gets around just fine, but she can’t drive anymore and even if the leg wasn’t a problem for the feds, the flashbacks are.”

“Kid, listen-”

“Rick, please, just let me finish before I start crying.” Tara takes a deep, shaky breath, staring down at the oak wood of the desk. “We had a false pregnancy, about a year ago. Test came back with two lines and it was the best thing I’d ever seen. We were looking at names, planning a nursery...Rosita bought a damn baby book. And then we did the blood test. And...it might as well have been a miscarriage, with how real we really thought it was.”

Rick keeps quiet, watching Tara as she bites her lip, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat. “Yesterday, I was holding that baby, and I knew it wasn’t good, but she was alive and breathing and warm, and then she just-” Her voice breaks and she takes another long, shaky breath, tears adding a rasp to her voice. “She was there and she was gone and that’s been my life for two years. I’d take them, both of them, in a heartbeat, but Rosita can’t, and I’d never leave her, never…”

“Have you tried?” Rick asks softly, leaning slightly to make eye contact. “Put in an application and see what happens?”

“You think we wouldn’t have thought of that by now?” Tara laughs bitterly, her voice still catching on her words. “That was our first idea. I’m missing essential equipment and Rosita’s been through enough already when it comes to physical challenges; if we could skip the pregnancy, that’d be ideal. We got shot down on the first round of paperwork.”

“Private adoption?”  
  


“Because South Georgia parents are lining up to give their kids to lesbian cops and their bisexual army vet wives? Rick, Rosita and I thought we would never be able to get _married._ That was only legal two years ago. We live in a state where conversion therapy is _legal._ No one’s going to give us a baby, Rick, and that’s a fact I faced a long time ago, so please stop trying to make me think it could happen.”

Rick sighs, touching Tara’s shoulder. “You’re not in trouble, you know that, right? You don’t have to justify yourself to me or to anyone else-”

“I’m not.” Tara slips off the edge of his desk, wiping her eyes roughly on her sleeve. “I didn’t tell you that to try to get out of anything. I figured you deserved an explanation, Rick, because I know I let you down by charging in like that and I wanted you to at least know why. And if there’s punishment for it, then I’ll take it on the chin. I’ve got enough honor for that.”

The fiery determination in her eyes reminds Rick so much of Carl that it hurts, and he has to fight hard to speak over the lump forming in his throat as he reaches out to ruffle Tara’s hair. “Come on, kid. Crime ain’t gonna stop itself.”


	10. Accidents Happen And I Have One, Like, Every Ten Minutes

“Are we  _ seriously  _ in a doughnut shop right now?” Tara snorts, not dissuaded from her Oreo pastry anyway. “We are just  _ asking  _ to go viral.”

“Are you complaining?” Rick asks, sipping on his black coffee. “Because if you are, toss the doughnut and we’ll leave.”

“Burn in hell.” Tara takes another chomp out of the doughnut, somehow smearing frosting on her nose in the process. “Are you seriously drinking that shit?”

“What’s wrong with my Dunkin order?”

“It’s tiny, it’s hot, and it’s  _ decaf. _ ”

“Some of us prefer not to spend our lives jacked up on enough caffeine to kill a small dog.” Rick takes another sip, gesturing for Tara to wipe the frosting from her nose. “Plus cold coffee is a crime against humanity. Seriously though, kid, hurry up, we should get back on patrol.”

“Fine.” Tara crams the last of the doughnut into her mouth, wiping her nose with her napkin. “Let’s roll.”

The air outside is crisp and cool, a steady breeze ruffling Tara’s dark hair as she strides down the sidewalk, heading towards the crosswalk where they left the car across the street. Rick’s caught her jaywalking out of uniform at least five times since she came to town, but thankfully she has the sense to use a crosswalk on duty.

Distracted by a bird in a tree, Tara skips ahead, grinning as she studies the animal. “It’s gorgeous. Look at those feathers...here, let me get a pic. Rosita’ll love it, she’ll know exactly what it is.”

Somewhat surprised by the knowledge that Rosita is apparently an avian nerd, Rick turns away from her for just a moment, and when he glances back, Tara is in the middle of the crosswalk, angling her phone to get the shot, when the light changes and the truck in front - he vaguely recognizes it as Merle Dixon’s - hums forward, heading directly for Tara.

Speed he never knew he had courses through his body and Rick shoots forward, crashing into Tara and shoving her forwards just a second before Dixon’s truck rolls over the spot where she’d been standing the moment before, still engrossed in her bird. They both hit the concrete hard on the other side, protected by their vests but still bruised by the impact. Tara is the first to get up - shit hurts less when you’re young, Rick reasons - gaping at the crosswalk now flooded with cars. “Holy-”

“You have  _ got  _ to be more careful!” Protective anger replaces panic as Rick hauls himself up, concrete scrapes stinging. “You could have died right there!”

“Rick, I’m sorry, I didn’t see-”

“Well, you’d better start seeing! I’m not gonna be around to save your ass forever, although at this rate, it’s clear who’s gonna live longer!”

Tara lowers her head in shame, cheeks flushed pink. “I’m sorry. I’ll - I’ll be more careful.”

Seeing his audacious trainee looking so abashed drains the anger from his body to be replaced once more with concern. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Nothing bad. Just scrapes and bruises.” Tara winces as she stands, a bruise already forming on her face. “You?”   
  


“I’ve had worse,” Rick grunts, hauling himself up. “Don’t ever do that again, you hear me?”

And before she can speak to answer, Rick hugs her roughly, the last of the panic fading away as it truly sinks in that she’s alive and breathing. Tara must sense that he’s in no mood to be trifled with, because she nods, squeezing back briefly before they separate. “I hear you, Rick.”   
  


“Good. Get your ass in the squad car, and try not to break your neck in the process.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They get lunch from a Burger King drive-thru and pull over to the side of the road to watch a red light and eat. Tara dips her fries in her milkshake like it’s ketchup, and Rick doesn’t even blink, because of course she does. No sauce, either - she got her grilled chicken sandwich with no mayonnaise and leaves the sauce packets in her bag untouched. They eat in comfortable silence, Rick trying not to think about how french fries and ice cream must taste in one bite.

“Hey, Rick?”

“Yeah, kid?” He’s comfortable, relaxed. The street is sleepy today, cars slowing obediently for the flickering yellow-orange signal. And Rick is sleepy too, at peace with this car and this cheap fast food and his trainee making horrifying food decisions beside him.

“What happened to your son?”

And that wonderful peace pops like a soap bubble at the question, innocent yet heavy, like Tara knows the answer won’t be a good one. Rick tenses up again, and the fry in his hand drops into the ketchup packet balanced in the cupholder. His voice is strained as he chokes out a response, clenching his fist around the door handle. “Who told you about him?”

“No one, honest to God,” Tara promises, inching slightly towards the door as a storm takes over his face. “I saw his picture in the hall...Carl Grimes. And he looked just like you…but you said you only had Judith…”

“I do,” Rick manages gruffly, forcing himself to calm down enough to loosen his fist, because he’s scaring Tara and as tactless as she is, she didn’t mean any harm. “Only had Judith for three years now.”

“What happened…?” Tara murmurs, settling a little more comfortably into her seat.

Rick sighs heavily, letting his head rest on the steering wheel. It’s been a long, long time since he told anyone about what happened to Carl...three years, to be exact. The only person he had to tell was Lori. Her scream still echoes in his ears, tinny through the hospital payphone.

“Why do you want to know, kid?”

Tara gapes like a fish for a moment, and if it wasn’t this moment, Rick would be smirking as she floundered for an explanation to cover that she’s just plain nosy. But it’s impossible to unbalance that swagger for long, and Tara spins her bullshit soon enough. “I’m a curious girl, Rick. Plus he’s on the wall, but I’ve never met him, so…”

His first instinct is to tell her to keep her nose firmly in her own damn business instead of sifting through his. But Tara never gives up once she’s gotten an idea into her head, and if it’s not now, in the quiet and relative calm, it’ll be some other time that she finally wrangles it out of him. So Rick leans back in his seat and distracts himself with a fry he’s lost his appetite for and sorts through old memories, trying to decide where to start.

“I know I seem a little old to have a kid Judith’s age. I am. She was an accident, Carl was already twelve when she was born. He’d be a few years older than you today. It was just me and Carl and Lori...and all Carl wanted was to be like me. A cop. Ever since he was old enough to talk, he wanted to be a cop.”

Tara’s abandoned her fries entirely, listening intently. She really is like Carl, and thinking about his son only makes it more obvious.

“He went to school for law enforcement and went straight into the academy, and he excelled. As soon as he applied, Hershel hired him, and he assigned him to me, same way he assigned you. I got to train my son in the job I loved. Couldn’t have been happier.” 

And there she is in Carl’s seat, and it’s almost the same. Almost. 

“Sophia Peletier called 9-1-1 one day, said her dad was beating her and her mom and he’d ripped her eye out and was screaming he’d kill Carol. Carl and I went with Shane and Hershel to stop it, and when we pulled up Carl saw Sophia. Ed had her by the throat, and blood was pouring down her face from where he took the eye. He told her he was gonna kill her for calling the cops, and Carl...they’d been best friends since they were kids, he and Sophia grew up together. She was practically another baby sister to him, and he ran at Ed...turns out he had a gun.”

Tara gasps, a little pale as she watches Rick, wincing as his voice wavers. “Oh, God…”

“He died on-scene after Shane pumped Ed’s shooting arm full of lead and took him to the ground. We tried to save him, but it tore clean through his aorta. He died in seconds.”

Rick heaves another sigh, staring at the horizon, just beginning to be streaked with the orange of sunset. “Lori left after he died. Couldn’t look me in the eyes any longer. She blames me. Judith does too. Carl was her whole world. God, I haven’t heard that little girl laugh in years, not until you…”

Tara swallows hard, and when he glances over, he can see her nervously biting her lower lip. “It wasn’t your fault, Rick.”

“Maybe. But maybe I could have stopped him. And Judith doesn’t believe that anyway.” Rick slumps down in his seat, watching the fingers of sunset paint the darkening sky, mostly because it’s easier to watch than Tara.

  
There’s silence for a moment, and then Tara swings her legs over and somehow she’s sitting on the glovebox between their seats, because  _ of course  _ she is, leaning over to hug him, her chin resting on his head. And it’s absolutely ridiculous, the top of her head touching the roof of the car, but the simple, foolish gesture means more than  _ sorry  _ ever could.


	11. Do You Really Wanna Know Exactly How We're Medically Knocking Up My Wife?

“See you tomorrow morning?” Rick asks, scooping up his bag. “Bright and early, four a.m.”

Tara tilts her head, obviously confused. “I’m - did Hershel not tell you? I’m off tomorrow, for...stuff.”

“What kinda stuff?” Rick turns around at that, surprised. Tara hasn’t called a day off yet, and it’s not like her to keep secrets. “You didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, I was trying to keep it on the downlow…” Tara blushes, leaning against the wall. “Baby stuff. Specifically, making-one stuff.”

“You’re taking a full ten-hour shift off for that?” Rick snorts, swinging the bag strap over his shoulder. “Yet you wouldn’t go home when you had the flu?”

“This is different!” Tara protests, now roughly the shade of the fire trucks at the station across the street. “It’s a minor surgical procedure! Plus Rosita needs to rest for the rest of the day, and I’m not having her get up if I can help it.”

“Wait...surgery...for you?” Admittedly, he’s no expert at fertility treatments, but he still can’t put together why  _ Tara  _ would be the one undergoing surgery. “How-”

“Technically we’re both having something, but mine is definitely the more invasive one-” Tara suddenly glares at him, still futilely trying to stop blushing. “Listen, do you really want all the details of how we’re knocking up my wife tomorrow, because I can give them to you-”

“No, no, that’s fine-” Rick chokes on a laugh, doing his best to stifle it as he straightens his hat. “I’ll pass on that-”

“Really, because what we’ve been trying is intrauterine insemination, but we’ve been preparing for in-vitro fertilization, and I’m ovulating, so tomorrow they take my eggs and use donor-”

“I get it!” Rick laughs, tears nearly coming to his eyes. “I get it, I’m sorry!”

“You’d better be,” Tara says mock-sternly, folding her arms. “But seriously...if this doesn’t work, nothing will. So...give me a hug and wish me good luck, okay?”

“I gotcha, kid.” Rick wraps an arm around her shoulders, giving her a comforting squeeze. “Good luck tomorrow. You’re gonna be a great mom, you know that?”

Tara giggles, a little tearily. “Thanks...I hope so. I really hope so.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next time he sees Tara is two days after their conversation, and she’s an absolute nervous wreck. She’s even more hyper than usual, her feet tap constantly against the floor of the car, numbers work even worse for her, and she won’t stop checking her phone every thirty seconds. Finally, Rick pulls over, plucking the device out of her hand. “Spill.”

“Spill what?” Tara asks false-nonchalantly, grabbing for her phone. 

“Kid, you’re not this wild on your third giant coffee. What’s going on?”

“...it’s done.”

“What?”

“It’s done. The procedure. Two weeks and we find out…”   
  


“Ah.” Rick nods, gently squeezing her arm. “And the phone checking?”

Tara sighs, seeming to draw a little into herself. “She wasn’t feeling good yesterday. All normal side effects, nothing unusual, but still...if it gets bad, I wanna be able to get to her.”

“Hey.” Rick puts the phone down, scooping up Tara’s hand. “Rosita’s tough as hell, and pretty damn smart, and far more mature than you, kid. If anything’s going wrong, you know she’ll call the doctor and get it taken care of, probably while you run around like a chicken with its head cut off. You hear me?”

Tara nods, but her eyes don’t stray from the phone. “Still…”

“Tara.”

Finally, she sighs, replacing her phone in her pocket. “I’ll try.”

“All I could ever ask from you.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rick’s at his desk, scribbling down a summary of a traffic stop for a report, when the door swings open to reveal Rosita, obviously trying to conceal a giddy smile. “Hey, Rick. Is Tara in?”   
  


“She’s in Hershel’s office. Should be back in a few minutes if you wanna wait for her.” Rick puts the report down for the moment, looking up at Rosita. “She forget her lunch again?”

“No…” Rosita leans in conspiratorially, perching on the edge of his desk. “No, I actually wanted to surprise her…”

She hands him a folded slip of paper, a grin slowly creeping across her face as Rick carefully opens it. It’s a lab report from Dr. Beth Greene’s office, one for a blood draw. At the bottom, in big bold letters, reads the word:  _ pregnant.  _

Rick laughs out loud, neatly folding it back up before handing it back to Rosita. “She’s gonna lose her shit, I hope you know that.”

“Like Tara has any shit left to lose.” Rosita hops back off the edge of the desk, settling into a waiting room chair. “She said she told you. Listen, you gotta keep a straight face till she sees, okay? I have  _ not  _ suffered in silence with mood swings, headaches, and perpetual exhaustion for the past three days for you to blow it now.”

Rick simply mimes zipping his lips, turning back to the report, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, both with joy for the couple and at the mental image of Tara reading that report.

As if on cue, Tara swings back in, ponytail bouncing behind her. “Well, that briefing was really - babe? Is everything okay?” Her face instantly shifts into concern at seeing Rosita at the department, and Rick has to bite down hard into his cheek to keep from laughing at that.

“Just peachy,” Rosita says sweetly, handing her the paper.  _ 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… _

Tara’s scream nearly shatters the nearby window. Even expecting it, Rick nearly falls out of his chair, grinning as his trainee buries her head in her hands, paper fluttering to the floor as she sobs. “Aw, honey…” Rosita laughs, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Were you surprised?”

“How long have you  _ known? _ ” Tara wails, grinning ridiculously through her tears. “How long has  _ Rick  _ known?”

“I’ve been pretty sure for three days,” Rosita admits, nodding towards the paper. “But I wanted to have  _ that  _ before I told you. And Rick has known for approximately forty-five seconds, he’s as surprised as you are.”

“No conspiracy,” Rick promises from his desk, still laughing as Tara mops her eyes on her sleeve. “Except maybe on your wife’s part.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next weeks fly by quickly, and Tara changes just as quickly, but, Rick has to admit, for the better. The baby on the way leaves her giggling randomly, especially whenever she looks at her phone, but at the same time, she’s maturing, taking herself more seriously. She takes over all but the lightest of Rosita’s usual workload, constantly pushing her to rest. And Rick catches her more than once on various parenting blogs, already reading up on taking care of a baby.

“Kid, she’s only four weeks along,” Rick tells her, tapping the power button on her computer to tear Tara away from a long discussion of what makes babies cry at night. “You got plenty of time. Try to breathe.”

“But what if-”

“I guarantee whatever you’re about to say is extremely unlikely, to the point of absurdity.”

“But what if it’s not and I’m not ready and…” Tara stops suddenly, biting on her lip again. Finally, she looks up at Rick, big brown eyes welling with sudden tears, and he’s never seen her look so small. “What if I’m a bad mom…?”

“Hey.” Rick kneels down to her level, turning her head gently so that she’s looking directly into his eyes. “Kid. You’re not going to be a bad mom. You’re already one of the best parents I’ve ever seen. You’re going to do fine. But you’re running yourself ragged trying to learn everything there is to know about kids. They don’t come with an instruction manual. You’re gonna have to figure it out as you go, and it’s gonna be scary as hell, but you’re never gonna regret it.”

Tara nods shakily, blinking back the sudden wave of tears. “God...I’m sorry, I’m worse than Rosita…”

“How’s she doing?” Rick asks, clapping her shoulder as he pushes himself up. “Holding up all right?”

“For now. She cries all the time and she gets worn out pretty easy, but she’s not too bad. Just hoping it stays that way.”

“If she’s anything like Lori was, give her two weeks.” Rick grins, handing her a report. “Read that over while I grab us some coffee. We’re gonna be here till three tonight.”

Tara groans, letting her head slump down onto the table. “Somehow five-to-threes are worse than early morning shifts. Get me two.”

“You will  _ actually  _ die if I do that.”

“Good.”


	12. Chapter 12: Everyone Just Go The Fuck to Sleep

Rick’s phone goes off at four, just moments after he’d sunk peacefully into bed after a long shift. For a second, he almost ignores it, but it could be Lori telling him about something that happened to Judith - it’s her time with his daughter - so he scoops it up blearily, swiping without bothering to glance at the screen. “Hello?”

“Rick, oh thank God…” Tara half-moans into the phone, panic edging into her voice. “I didn’t want to wake you but I tried Glenn and Maggie but they didn’t answer-”

“Kid, what is going on over there?” Rick grumbles, running a hand over his stubbled chin in frustration. He’s grown to love Tara, he really has, but right now he could strangle her.

“It’s Rosita,” she manages, and an instant jolt of fear shoots through him, immediately replacing the irritation at being pulled away from oh-so-inviting sleep. “Something’s wrong, she’s sick and she’s in pain and she’s burning up, and I don’t know why, but I need someone-”

“Kid, take a deep breath,” Rick orders, already reaching for a clean pair of pants to pull over his boxers. “I’ll be there in ten. Stay with her, keep an eye on her. I’m coming.”

He barely hears Tara mumble some frantic assent before the line goes dead and he stands up, pulling on clothes. He’s got another shift at nine, and he’s going to be absolutely dead for it, but he can’t hang them out to dry like that. 

The roads are almost empty, and he reaches Tara’s house without incident. She unlocked the door for him - or maybe she just didn’t bother to lock it back after stumbling home exhausted - so he lets himself in, calling for Tara as he enters their dark living room. 

“Upstairs,” Tara calls shakily, voice echoing through the house. “On the left.”

Rick follows her voice, climbing the stairs before turning towards the first door on the left, a thin crack of light shining from underneath the door. It swings open under his touch and he steps in to find Tara half-dressed in an oversized Billy Joel T-shirt and pajama shorts, kneeling beside a shivering Rosita on the cold tile floor, gently smoothing a hand down her back. 

Rosita looks bad, sweat beading on her face as she curls against Tara. She’s clearly boiling, even stripped down to her bra and pajama shorts, her face tight with pain as sits quietly on the floor, looking rather like a half-drowned kitten fished from a lake. As Rick steps hesitantly towards the couple, she lets her head fall over the toilet, shoulders shaking. Tara gasps, murmuring a soft “oh, baby” before brushing the sweat-dampened hair back, her face pale and tight with worry.

Rick hurries to dampen a washcloth by the sink with cool water, gently pressing it against the back of Rosita’s neck. “This’ll bring her body temperature down, help with the heat. I’m not seeing anything that Lori didn’t have around this time, just a little more extreme. Try to get some water into her and let her sleep. If it’s still this bad in the morning, I’d call your doctor. But I doubt it will be.”

“Why is it called morning sickness if it’s all fucking day and night?” Rosita mumbles, managing a weak grin anyway. “It’s really not that bad, it’s Tara who’s freaking out.”

“Well,  _ excuse me  _ for being concerned about your health,” Tara shoots back, but she does look a little abashed. “I’m sorry, Rick, I just…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Rick pulls himself off the floor, pushing a stray strand of dark hair out of Tara’s eyes and giving Rosita’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “I’m gonna head home and hit the hay, and you probably should too. Tara and I have a nine a.m. shift, and the best thing you can do to feel better is rest.”

“Shit, right,” Tara groans, letting her head thud against the wall. “Oh, God…”

“Get some sleep, kid,” Rick orders, nudging her leg with one booted foot. “That’s an order from a senior officer.”

Tara smiles a little, sleepily saluting him as she peels herself off the tile floor. “Yes, sir. Coming, babe?”

Rosita shakes her head, paling a little at the motion. “Gonna be here for a while, I think. You go, honey, you need to sleep.”

“But-”

“No buts. Honey, you’ve been running yourself ragged trying to do the work for both of us for the past two weeks. I’ll call if I need you, I promise.”

Tara opens her mouth to argue, but she’s visibly weakening at the prospect of a few hours of sleep. “Okay,” she mumbles finally, bending down to kiss her wife softly. “You’d better yell if you need me, got it?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” As Tara stumbles out, Rosita turns to Rick, her voice hoarse as she whispers. “Make sure she actually does go, m’kay?”

“Course,” Rick promises, leaning out to look out the door just in time to watch Tara practically collapse on her bed, already snoring. “Yeah, she’s out, she’s been dead on her feet for days. Are you sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine,” Rosita promises, nodding towards the phone on the floor. “I’ll call Maggie if I need help, they’re just down the road and she’ll be up any minute now. Hopefully I’ll be able to join Tara soon.”

“Okay.” Instinct warns against leaving her alone - he’s grown quite fond of Rosita, and the idea of leaving her to suffer by herself doesn’t strike him as quite right - but she’s insisting she’s fine, and Maggie’s probably better to help anyway, and he won’t be any good if he’s stumbling around like a zombie. “I’m a light sleeper. If you call me, I’ll hear.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rosita mumbles, fanning her face limply with her hand.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rick is heading out the door for the dreaded nine a.m. shift, bleary-eyed and armed with a cup of coffee to rival Tara’s usual size, when his phone buzzes in his bag. Mumbling a few swear words as his promise to Rosita that he’d hear if she called flashes through his head, he awkwardly maneuvers the coffee to the side and fishes it out, swiping to read the message.

It’s from Tara, but not nearly as frantic as last night’s call. It’s a picture, taken from a bizarrely awkward angle, of Tara herself grinning sleepily up at the camera, Rosita curled on her stomach, messy hair tangled adorably on top of her head like a bird’s nest, hiding her face from the camera. Another green bubble appears beneath it a few moments later.  _ Sorry, not coming in today. It’s illegal to move. _

Rick rolls his eyes, covering a smile before it sinks in that it’s 8:45 already and Tara’s not even out of bed yet.  _ Kid, get your ass down to the station, and if you’re late, I’m not bailing you out. _

_ Asshole.  _

Tara charges like a bull into the station exactly as the clock flips over to nine, hair pulled into messy pigtails and a dab of blue toothpaste stuck to the corner of her mouth. “I’m on time! I’m on time!”

“Good luck passing roll call,” Rick mutters, not maliciously. “Get over here, kid. We’ve got an amber alert out. Fourteen-year-old kid from out of town, not too far from the Greene farm. Name’s Louis Morales. Here’s the picture.” 

Tara scoops it up, studying the face closely. “I know him. He’s a good kid. We pay him to cut the grass every now and then. He wouldn’t have just wandered off, Rick.”

“That’s what the parents said.” Rick hands her the rest of the report, leaning back in his chair. “Last seen leaving school yesterday. His sister says he gave her the slip somewhere around the ballpark, told her to run home, he was going to go check something. She did, and he didn’t follow. His parents called in around ten o’clock last night, and they put out the alert this morning.”

“What do you think?” Tara hops on the edge of his desk, balancing like a cat as she flips through the papers. 

“I think he’s probably fine. Kids go missing a lot. Thirty percent of the time they get home on their own, and thirty percent they’re just at a friend’s house. My bet is he went into the woods, probably after a deer or something, and got himself lost around a turn. Odds are he’ll get home soon enough, and the state troopers are out after him already.”

“You don’t think he could have been taken?”

“Almost always, when kids get kidnapped, it’s a custody battle situation. And the Morales’s couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to get custody of Louis, especially without grabbing Eliza too.”

Tara nods, but the tension at the idea of a kidnapper doesn’t leave her face. “So are we going out after him?”

“We’re gonna try his friends,” Rick tells her. “See if any of them are hiding him. He’s close with Sam Anderson, apparently, and Mika Samuels...and Judith.”

“Judith won’t have him,” Tara assures him. “She wouldn’t. I bet he’s probably under Sam’s bed. Judith wouldn’t do something like that.”

“You’d be surprised,” Rick mutters, nodding towards the squad car. “Hop in. We’re going to Jessie Anderson’s place.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rick nearly falls over when the door isn’t opened by Jessie Anderson - his old high school sweetheart - but Michonne, even more gorgeous up-close. He barely manages to keep his mouth shut, and Tara has to do the talking, nudging him in the side the whole time.

“I see,” Michonne says thoughtfully, and her dark eyes fall half-shut captivatingly as she considers. “Sam’s at school, but I’m sure Jessie won’t mind if you check his room.”

“Thanks,” Tara tells her, barely biting back a laugh at Rick’s shell-shock. “We’ll ask her and head up. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

“I don’t think I know you,” Michonne says suddenly, and Rick straightens like he’s been slapped, face burning like a hormonal teenager at being directly addressed by this woman. “What’s your name, officer?”   
  


“Rick,” he manages, and he practically chokes when she calls him  _ officer.  _ “Rick Grimes. Sheriff’s deputy. Tara here is doing probation with me.”

“I see,” she says again, and Rick gets the uncomfortable feeling that she sees more than he’d like. “I hope you find him soon. I like Louis.”

“So do I,” Rick agrees, straightening his hat. “We’ll find him soon enough. He’s probably in Sam’s closet right now.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the Andersons’ house, the Samuels’ house, and even Sam’s older brother Ron’s place across town come up empty, Rick and Tara are forced back to the drawing board. “We could try Judith’s room,” she says eventually, frustration tense in her voice. “Even just to scratch it off the list. They’re the same age, you said they’re friends…”

“They are,” Rick admits, slumping back in his chair. “But still...a boy hiding out in her room? That’s not...that’s not Judith.”

“You said it yourself, teenagers are surprising,” Tara persists. “Come on, where else are we gonna look? If it turns out he’s under her bed and she’s been sneaking him bags of chips on the sly for two days, we’re gonna look really stupid.”

“Fine,” Rick sighs, turning the car into gear. “Let’s just go.”

The house is eerily silent as Rick pulls up. Judith returned from Lori’s place yesterday during his afternoon shift and was in bed by the time he came home, so she’s in school now. But he hasn’t seen her in nearly five days, and it’s odd to spend so much time away from her, even for their normal schedule.

Her bag is gone when they come in, as well as her lunchbox. Rick heads upstairs to her room, a horrible pounding sensation in his chest that he doesn’t understand at all as pushes open her door.

And Louis Morales is sitting on her bed, a backpack - not Judith’s - by his feet. Behind him, Tara swears loudly at the sight, pushing past him to run to Louis. “What were you thinking? Your whole family is worried sick, the  _ state troopers  _ are out looking for you-”

But Louis pushes past her, walking up to Rick, and that’s when he notices the white slip of paper in his hand. He hands it to Rick silently before walking back over to Tara, lowering his head submissively. Exchanging a startled look with Tara, he opens the letter slowly, the pounding building to a ringing in his ears that stinks of ominous fear as he unfolds the last corner of paper.

_ Dad, _

_ Don’t be mad at Louis. This was all my idea. He just helped me pull it off. I slipped out yesterday afternoon, right after Mom dropped me off. Louis ran away to buy me some time to get away. He’s been in my room all night. We knew that people would notice if he went missing, and you never would. Not until I got far, far away. _

_ Don’t try to follow me. I don’t want to be found. Especially not by you. _

_ Judith Grimes _

The letter falls from Rick’s hand as he crumples onto her bed, burying his head in his knees, a harsh, gasping sob tearing through his throat. He vaguely hears Tara yelp in surprise through the buzzing in his ears, hears her boots stomping over the floor. Everything feels very far away, like he’s trapped at the bottom of a pool of syrup, and Tara and Louis are just as distant and unreachable as Judith is, no, as Judith  _ became,  _ after he failed her, as her father and as a person…

“Shit,” Tara mumbles and it barely reaches him. But her arms do, and for their size differences, it’s remarkably easy for her to pull him against her, wrapping her skinny arms around his back. “Shit. We’re gonna find her, she can’t have gone far…”

But she could have, because she’s had a day and a night to put distance between herself and Rick, and she could be anywhere by now, miles away or picked up by a human trafficker or lying dead in the woods, because Judith  _ thinks  _ Carl taught her everything she needed to know about survival before he died, but he didn’t, he helped her and did things for her and she’s never been on her own, and she’s not had time to become the survivalist that Carl was. And all that he can think is that he’s lost another child, his only child, and it’s just as much his fault as the day Carl fell to the pavement in a pool of his own scarlet lifeblood.


	13. Chapter 13: Stay on the Sunny Side, Even If It's Raining There Too

“Rick!” Tara snaps, her voice stern with authority. “Get it together. We need to take Louis home and file an alert for Judith. I need you to pull it together if we’re gonna find her, you know that.”

Rick slowly looks up, eyes burning with hot tears. Tara’s face is stern, but not cold, her chin tilted up, and he can practically see the cogs spinning in her brain. “Come on. I’ll drive. Walsh can take Louis from the station after I question him and we’ll start looking for her.”

She’s right. She’s right and he knows it, and as much as instinct screams for him to run through the streets, overturning every rock looking for her, the best way to find her is to listen to Tara.

She half-drags them both downstairs, putting Louis in the back and depositing Rick in her usual seat, taking the wheel. Rick’s never let her drive the squad car before, but she takes to it naturally, keeping her head on remarkably straight as she pulls out of the driveway. Rick never would have pegged her to be cool under fire - he’d expected the opposite - but she is, maybe because she has to be.

“Put out the alert and stay by the phone,” Tara orders, pointing towards Rick’s desk as she pulls Louis towards the private room they use for questioning. “I’d call Sophia, they get along well enough. I’ll get what I can out of Louis and round up the rest of her friends, see what I can find.”

And if it was under any other circumstances, Rick would be beaming with pride as Tara goes from rookie to the demeanor of a seasoned officer in moments, shutting the door behind her as she takes Louis aside.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Nothing,” Tara sighs, leaning against the plaster wall. “Louis won’t talk, and I can’t legally detain him any longer unless I arrest him. Mika says she had no idea and I believe her.”

“Why?” Rick mutters hoarsely, staring at the phone on his desk, willing it to ring, willing it to be a call from Judith.

“She’s terrified,” Tara answers darkly. “Sam’s clueless too, and Sophia has no idea where she is, didn’t know she was planning to run. I doubt she told anyone other than Louis. She’s a smart kid, she’d know to keep it as much of a secret as she could.”

“What now…?” Rick mumbles, still staring a hole through the phone.  _ Please, please, please… _

“You stay here. Judith has a cell phone?” Rick nods assent. “Call her. Keep calling her. Leave voicemails if she won’t pick up. Let her know you care. I’m gonna help the state troopers look.”

“Don’t.” It comes out harsher than he intended, his voice low and gravelly from crying. “Don’t go. I - I need you here, kid.”

Tara sighs, the first flash of sorrow darkening her eyes. “Rick, I can’t leave her out there alone. If she’ll come to anyone out there, it’ll be me. I’m gonna go find your girl.” She hesitates for a moment, then speaks up, her voice shaking a little with apprehension. “Do you want me to call Lori…?”

And he does. He’d rather speak to anyone else than Lori, especially about this. About how he lost their baby girl. But it should be him. He can’t hide behind Tara, not for this. So he shakes his head slowly, gently picking up the phone, fiddling with it apprehensively. “Thanks, kid. But it’s gotta be me.”

Tara nods, pushing a loose strand of hair from her messy pigtails out of her eyes. “Got it. Any ideas where she might be? Favorite hangouts, places with happy memories?”

Rick shakes his head, slumping over his desk. “She’d go to the woods, I know she would, but...Carl was a hobby survivalist. He’d go into the woods for a week or so, live off the land. He taught Judith a little, but she has no idea how much he was doing behind her back, making her feel good...she thinks she knows a lot more than she does. If she went to the woods...we’re running out of time.”

“Okay.” Tara nods, keeping her face even. “I’ll start there. I’ll call you if I find anything, I promise.” She claps his shoulder, her breath hitching a little. “I don’t give up, Rick. I will find her. I won’t stop looking until I do.”

Then she’s gone, the car engine firing up out front, and Rick is all alone in the empty station.

There’s no point in holding off. So he bites the bullet and dials Lori’s number, closing his eyes in preparation to hear her voice. It still haunts him sometimes.

“Rick?” It’s so sharp, so angry, and it’s a forceful reminder of how much she hates him, how much she blames him for Carl. 

“Lori.” Her name tastes like lead in his mouth, heavy and foul and bitter.

She sighs, the same sigh she used to give him every time he left the toilet seat up and every other way he exasperated her, of which there were hundreds. Maybe thousands. “What do you want, Rick?”

“It’s Judith.”

Sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. As much as Lori hates him, she loved Judith, loves her as much as he does. She’s the last thing either of them has. “What did you do to her?”

“She ran away. She didn’t go to school. She left a note, we just found it. We’re looking for her now.”

“You let her run away? Rick, how long has she been gone?”

Rick falls silent, the reminder of his failure, of how it took him nearly sixteen hours to realize his only daughter was missing. “I didn’t get home till three, I thought she was asleep…”

“Rick, how long?!”

“...since you dropped her off. Her note said she bolted as soon as you left.”   
  


“And you didn’t notice?!”

“Lori, I was working-”

“My daughter is missing, lost God-knows-where in a town surrounded by a forest with a bear problem, because you were working?" 

“ _ Our  _ daughter,” Rick corrects sharply, his voice rising over the phone. “She left when neither of us were around!”

“On your time to watch her! God, Rick, you wonder why I wanted full custody and then you pull shit like this!”

“So what, you’re gonna try to take her?” Rick growls, clenching his fist around the phone until his knuckles whiten. “Gonna get full custody? Make sure she never sees her own father?”   
  


“Because that’ll be so much different than what she has now,” Lori spits coldly. “She spends half her time with me and half alone, Rick. You don’t take care of her. You don’t keep her safe. She’s been outside on her own for over half a day, and you didn’t even  _ notice.  _ I want her safe, Rick, and you’ve just proved she’s not safe with you.” And then she’s gone, a dull click cutting the line between them.

Rick slumps over his desk, burying his head in his hands. He feels like the worst father in the world. He might as well be, for all the good he’s done Judith.


	14. Lesbian Wisdom

Thirteen voicemails to Judith’s phone later, a ball of lead has sunken into Rick’s gut and the floor spins slowly underneath him. The woods are dark and sprawling, surrounding the town for nearly twenty miles and providing a home for the local bear population. And Judith is out there alone, with barely enough food for a few days, no clean water, and no way to make a shelter. Even if the bears miss her, exposure will take her in two days or less. Tara may already be looking for a corpse.

After twenty-four hours, you’re looking for a body. The clock is ticking for both of them.

By three o’clock and twenty-seven unanswered calls, Rick is nearing despair. By the most optimistic of estimates, Judith has about two hours left. Two hours to be found, or they’ll officially start looking for her body. He can’t lose another child. He doesn’t even know how to begin with that.

The ringing of the desk phone is almost mechanical in his ears as he lifts it to take the call. “Judith…?”

“Rick, it’s okay, everything’s okay!” Tara rushes to tell him, the wind crackling behind her. She must be calling from the woods, based on the spotty reception and the snapping of branches in the background. “Rosita has her, she’s at my place now! Rosita caught her trying to steal a sheet off the clothesline for a tent, she talked her into staying! I’m on my way now!”

“Okay!” Rick calls, leaping to his feet. She’s alive, she’s okay, she’s with Rosita, she’ll be fine… “I’m headed there now, thank God-”

“Rick, don’t.” Tara’s voice is quiet but stern, serious over the whistling of the wind.

“Don’t? Tara, if you think I’m leaving my daughter-”

“If she sees your car, she’ll bolt, you know that.” Tara sighs heavily, the sound of her boots snapping small twigs and crunching leaves crackling through the phone. “Let me talk to her. Just for an hour. Come on, what difference is one more hour gonna make?”

It’s horrible, but she’s right. Rick exhales hard, his fist tightening around the phone. “One hour. Then I’m coming.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tara doesn’t call again. No one else calls either. There’s nothing but the ticking of his clock on the desk as he stares at the wall, spots of sunlight dancing across the fading picture of his family he keeps on his desk, specks of dust illuminated in the light. Lori, smiling the way she only smiled at him, before she grew to hate him. Judith, ten years old, sheriff’s hat perched proudly on her head. And Carl - God, Carl, wearing his own uniform, grinning, an arm around his little sister. He’d just entered training when this was taken - the last picture of all four of them together before the accident.

One day crumbled the beauty captured in the old picture. One horrible, horrible day. God, did he ever even tell Judith what happened to her brother? In the mess of the emergency room and the phone calls and the shock, he’d brushed her off again and again, assumed she’d been told, and it’s just now striking him that she might not have ever found out, not the whole story.

An hour drags by like torture, but he sticks it out, gives Tara the time he promised her. The drive to her house feels like another hour in and of itself, and if he wasn’t in a squad car, he’d be tempted to punch it, defy the speed limits and fly down the country roads until he has his daughter back.

Rosita is waiting for him in the front yard, her brow furrowed as she approaches his car. “She’s inside. Tara’s with her.”

“She’s okay?” Rick demands, his hands trembling as he locks the car door. “She’s not hurt, she’s okay?”

“A little dirty, but fine,” Rosita confirms, touching his arm gently. “She’s - she’s pretty upset, Rick. I couldn’t calm her down, and I doubt Tara could either.”

“Of course she’s upset, she’s probably scared to death, she’s been missing-” Rick begins, but Rosita cuts him off.

“Not like that. Just…” She sighs, pushing her loose dark hair back behind her ears. “Come see for yourself.”

She leads him to the living room, and he was just barely keeping pace with her before, his strides nearly double the length of her own, but the sight inside stops him dead in the doorway.

Judith’s on the floor, and Tara is too, cradling the little girl protectively in her lap. And Judith clings to her like a lifeline, her slender body shaking with sobs, and tear tracks glisten on Tara’s cheeks as well as she rocks Judith gently back and forth, her arms wrapped shieldingly around her. As Rick walks in, her eyes flick up to meet his, and he can’t quite place the emotion on her face. There’s sorrow, definitely, and maybe a little anger, and something else he’s never seen before, almost an exhausted solidarity with his little girl. 

She whispers something to Judith, probably announcing his presence, but she only wails louder and cleaves more tenaciously to Tara, her arms wrapped tight around her neck.

Rick finally sinks down onto the couch closest to them, clasping his hands in his lap as Tara rocks Judith soothingly, chin resting on her head. All he can do now is wait. Something in Tara’s eyes warns him - no,  _ commands  _ him - not to ruin this moment, and he can tell instinctively that she’s right. That this is not his place, but Tara’s.

Finally, Judith lifts her head a little, revealing a puffy face and red, swollen eyes. Tara smooths a hand down her back, gently combing through her long brown hair. “Feel any better, baby girl?”

The way she says  _ baby girl  _ is sweet and casual, the nickname rolling off her tongue like she’s been using it for years, and Rick’s eyes prickle all over again at the love in her voice as she runs her fingers through Judith’s hair.

“Mm-mm…” Judith mumbles, leaning her head on Tara’s shoulder. “Don’t think I ever will…”

“Yeah…” Tara sighs, and her eyes are still glistening dangerously as she tightens an arm around Judith. “Yeah, I get that, baby girl. But I promise you will, okay?”

Judith shakes her head, still clinging to Tara like a vine on a tree. “No, I won’t…”

“Yeah, you will.” Tara presses a kiss to the top of her head, rubbing her shoulder encouragingly. “Eventually. It just takes some time.”

Judith’s eyes finally go to Rick, and she barely sighs, glaring at him through swollen eyes. “How long am I grounded for…?”

“Listen, nobody’s getting grounded, not at the moment, okay?” Rick says softly, his heart squeezing at how shockingly pitiful his daughter looks in the moment. “I just wanna talk for now.”

“For now?” Judith tilts her head, arms still around Tara’s neck. “So we talk and  _ then  _ you ground me? Because we can just skip it, go straight to no phone for a month. Fine by me.”

“Judith,” Rick says slowly, locking eyes with his daughter. “I don’t want to take your phone. I  _ do  _ want to know why you ran away. You scared me to death, you could have died, you could have been kidnapped…”

“Carl taught me,” Judith says stubbornly, hand resting on the hat on the floor beside her. “I would have been fine.”

“Carl wanted you to be happy,” Rick says then, and it comes out in a panicked rush. “He wanted you to be happy and so he let you pretend you were helping him while he did it all behind your back. He was...he was going to teach you for real when you were older.”

Judith falls silent for a moment, most likely from shock. They never talk about Carl, never say his name, and especially not as freely as Rick does now. Tara shuffles a little on the floor, looking distinctly uncomfortable, but Judith shows no willingness to move from her lap and Tara definitely does not have the heart to force her.

“Why didn’t you teach me?” Judith manages finally, swallowing hard on a lump in her throat. Rick can’t help but to laugh bitterly at that, his gaze dropping to his polished boots. 

“You think I was half the survivalist he was? Your brother taught himself. I didn’t teach him how to live the way he did. And you haven’t been taught either, and you can’t just go running off into the woods like that. Your - your  _ mother _ -” It stings to call Lori Judith’s mother, and then it hurts that he struggles to do something as simple as that, one final reminder of just how far apart they’ve grown - or been pushed. “Your mother is scared to death, and the state troopers were out looking for you, and Mika Samuels was sobbing in the police station when we questioned her about you-”

Judith’s eyes snap up at that, color draining from her face. “You dragged Mika into the station? Dad, she had nothing to do with it-”

“And we know that  _ now, _ ” Rick continues, cutting her off effectively. “But we had to see if you told her anything. My advice is that if you don’t want your friends questioned, you shouldn’t run away from home and leave your message  _ with a friend. _ ”

Judith sighs, but doesn’t argue, melting back into Tara. “Why didn’t you just let me go?”

Rick stares at her, his mouth almost falling open at the question. “Why - why didn’t I let you leave home at thirteen? Why didn’t I let you get yourself killed in the woods? Because you’re my daughter, Judith Grimes, and I love you, and I could never forgive myself if I lost you. Never.” 

Judith doesn’t say anything. She stares blankly at the floorboards, barely responding to Tara’s hand slowly stroking her hair. The silence stretches long, until Tara finally speaks up, and her voice is uncharacteristically gentle. “Was there something you wanted to tell your dad?”

“Do I have to…?” Judith mumbles, still fixated upon the rug underneath them. 

“You don’t have to,” Tara answers quietly, her voice heavy with something Rick can’t place. “But it might help.”

“Did it for you…?”

Tara sighs deep, shoulders slumping. “That’s...that’s a complicated question.”

And Rick is dying to ask exactly  _ what  _ they’re talking about, whatever this common experience is that he missed out on, but Judith shuts down his thoughts in moments in one desperate cry, immediately turning her head back into Tara’s shoulder, sobbing anew.

“I’m queer!”

Tara draws her in immediately, resting her chin protectively on Judith’s head, glaring at Rick, daring him to say something. He doesn’t take the challenge, reeling silently in his own head. It’s not a problem, but it’s a shock, and his tongue feels too big for his mouth as he struggles to get his bearings in this sea of new and complicated issues between him and Judith.

Finally, he manages to work out “Um. Okay. That’s - that’s fine,” and Tara’s gaze softens as she presses a kiss to the top of Judith’s head, rocking her soothingly. 

From there, it’s mostly awkward silence punctuated by Judith’s wails and Tara’s murmures reassurances and the occasional squeak of Rick’s boots against the wooden floorboards as he shuffles his feet, unsure of his place in this moment but certain that, at least, it’s here. Finally, Tara manages to soothe Judith enough to get her to stop crying, and Rick realizes that once again, her cheeks are also wet.

“Baby girl,” she murmurs finally, her voice raspy with held-back tears. “I want you to go to Rosita, okay? I’m gonna talk to your dad for a little bit.”

Rick expects her to refuse, the way she’s latched onto Tara, but crying has made her unusually docile and she willingly stumbles out of the room, her boots clicking against the floorboards signaling her retreat. As soon as Judith’s gone, Tara turns to him, wiping away her own tears. “You took that well. Better than I thought you would.”

“You thought I’d be mad?” Rick asks quietly, and then it strikes him that  _ of course  _ Tara at least thought of that that, most likely worried about it, because she told him during one of their long days filing paperwork that she’d been living openly as a lesbian since she was fourteen and ten years later, there must have been plenty of people in her life who  _ were  _ mad. But he still feels an odd need to defend himself. “I wasn’t about you, remember?”

“Yeah, well...some people feel different when it’s their kids,” Tara mumbles, and there’s a strong bite of bitterness in her tone that takes Rick aback all over again. “That’s why she ran, Rick. She’s known for a while, but...she and Mika Samuels were... _ experimenting  _ the other day, and she panicked. That’s why she freaked when she found out we talked to Mika.”

“And why Mika was so scared,” Rick finishes, gazing at Tara on the floor, legs crossed and head bowed. “Spit it out, kid.”

She glances up, eyes big and sad, glistening slightly still, red from crying. “Mm…?”

“I’ve spent enough time with you to know when you’re holding something back, and I think the events of the last twenty-four hours have made it clear that secrets don’t make friends.” Rick leans forward, clasping his hands together casually. “So spit it out. I can tell you’re dying to.”

Tara sighs, pulling her knees up to her chest. “When I came out...it didn’t go  _ nearly  _ this well. My sister didn’t even blink, she’d already pretty much figured it out for herself, and my dad...he wasn’t thrilled, but he - he tried, y’know? He still doesn’t get it, and he still doesn’t really approve...but he tried. But my mom…”

She rests her chin on her knees, making herself as small as possible on the carpet. “My mom flew off the handle. She called me a lot of pretty horrible things, most of which I had to Google later...I was  _ that  _ young. She - she scared me. She slapped me, demanded to know where she went wrong with me...Lilly was literally standing between us, it was that bad.”

Rick flinches, images easily forming in his mind’s eye of a young and frightened Tara cowering in the corner, sobbing just as hard as Judith was only minutes ago. “Tara, I’m sorry…”

“Yeah, me too.” Tara laughs humorlessly, hugging her knees to her chest. “My parents split up over that day. My dad said he didn’t feel safe with my mom and me in the same house anymore, and he was probably right. He got sole custody of me and weekdays with Lilly. My mom...they gave her visitation rights to see me. She never used them, not even once. I haven’t seen her in ten years.”

Rick hesitates for a moment, then slides off the couch, settling on the rug beside Tara to wrap an arm around her shoulders. She slowly drops her head onto his shoulder, curling her fingers around the fabric of his sleeve to keep him close. Her hands are trembling.

“My mom might as well be dead, and my sister...my sister and her niece live in the city, I almost never see them, and my dad-” Tara chokes on her own words, hot tears dripping onto Rick’s arm as she clutches his sleeve. “He’s dying, Rick. Maybe a few months left now. Maybe weeks. Maybe days. We don’t know.”

Rick tightens his arm around her shoulders, flinching at her words. He knew that at least some of Tara’s perpetual good mood must have been a facade; no human being truly smiles as much as she does. But he never imagined how desperately lonely and hurting she was under the false narrative of nothing but happiness. “I’m sorry, kid.”

Tara doesn’t meet his eyes, head still resting on his shoulder. “I was worried about Judith because my family...Rosita is my family. Rosita is all I’ve got, Rick, and living like this, being yourself, if you’re like me, and Judith too...you lose people. She came to me because...she knew I’d get it, I guess.”

“And I’m glad she did,” Rick answers, giving her a gentle squeeze. “Thank you for saving my daughter, you and Rosita both. Kid, listen to me, okay? I...I know how it is, when you’re about to lose someone you love...you let me know when...when you need to be there, okay, and I’ll get you the time. I don’t care how. I’ll get you the time to be with your dad.”

Her eyes widen and she tightens her grip on his sleeve, letting out a slow, shaky breath. “Rick, you don’t have to…”

“I do,” he tells her, and then she’s struggling not to cry all over again and the emotion on her face makes something clench tight and painful in his chest. “Kid, I need you to know something. It’s not just you and Rosita, not anymore. You’ve got Judith and me now, and I know we’re not much...but we’re here.”

It takes her a moment to respond, biting hard on her lip as she struggles to process what Rick is offering to her, and then she throws her arms around his neck, burying her head in his uniform shirt. Rick wraps his arms around her easily, smoothing a hand down her back. She’s smaller than he realized, and a rush of protectiveness floods through him as he sees Tara, for the first time, as vulnerable.

It’s not right to see Tara without her smile, to feel her tremble the way she does against him, to see her so  _ sad,  _ haunted by ghosts from long ago, and Rick is overwhelmed by a sudden need to make her laugh. “Hey, kid?” he says softly, touching her arm.

“Mm…?” She doesn’t lift her head.

“What does  _ queer  _ mean?”

Tara is still for just a split second, and then just as Rick begins to wonder if that was a bad question or if he brought up something he shouldn’t have or if he’s offended her somehow, she giggles, albeit a little tearily. “You’re  _ such  _ a dad, oh my God.”

Rick laughs too, giving her a teasing nudge. “Come on, kid. Help an out-of-touch old guy out. I’m gonna do my best to be cool about this, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”

And she finally lifts her head, revealing her warm, bright smile, wiping away the last of the traces from a few more tears. “It doesn’t matter if you always get it right. It matters if you try.”

Rick returns her smile, removing his arm from her shoulders. “I’m going to try.”

“Good,” Tara murmurs, slowly uncurling from her tucked-up position. “But don’t tell me that. Tell her.”


	15. Sometimes a Family Is a Grumpy Dad, His Lesbian Daughter, Their Also-Lesbian Neighbors, and a Great Dane Named Kevin

Tara delivers a red-eyed but somewhat calmer Judith to the living room, squeezing her arm before giving her a gentle but insistent nudge towards Rick. “Your dad wants to talk to you. I’ll be in the other room with Rosita, okay?”

Rick nods understanding and she goes with one last encouraging smile, boots clicking away on the dark wooden floorboards, leaving him alone with Judith. She looks smaller than usual, shoulders hunched and face all but hidden under the brim of the sheriff’s hat. She looks even more lost without Tara’s guidance, shuffling her sneakers on the floor as she studies the cracks in the floorboards.   
  


“Judith?” Rick says softly, making no move to rise from the floor. “Did you really think you had to run away?”

She makes a noncommittal noise, squeaking her sneakers nervously against the floorboards. “Scared.”

And she’s still speaking to him in monosyllables. Still with that flat, empty tone. Still with the apathy like a stab wound he’s grown to live with over the years. And every eye roll and emotionless, stilted response stabs him all over again. 

But he can’t give up, not yet. Not ever. “Scared I was gonna be mad about something like that? Judith, I don’t care who you wanna date, as long as you’re happy and they treat you right. What I care about - you could have  _ died.  _ You’re lucky Rosita found you, if she hadn’t…” Rick sighs, burying his head in his hands. “I can’t lose you too. There’s  _ nothing  _ you could do to make me mad enough to want you gone, nothing in this world.”

Judith looks up a little, tipping the brim of the hat back just enough to reveal her swollen, puffy eyes. “I didn’t know that.”

“And that’s on me,” Rick confesses freely. “I know I’m not around enough. I know I haven’t spent as much time with you as I should. I’m trying to do better, I really am...but I need you to know I love you, Judith, I need you to know that right now.”

“As much as you loved Carl?” Judith barely breathes it, and she hangs her head in shame and fear as soon as the words are out, but they’re out, and they snatch the breath from Rick’s lungs more sharply than a punch in the gut would. He can’t even speak, his mouth half-open as shock hits him like a brick wall. He never knew Judith felt like that, worried that she wasn’t as good as her brother, and the realization hurts more than knowing that she ran from him because she didn’t know him. She doesn’t only not know him, she doesn’t know he loves her, the one thing he always hoped he’d managed to impress upon her, no matter how distant she became.

“Judith,” he says finally, and his voice is as hard as stone. “I want you to listen to me. I loved Carl more than anything else in this life, and losing him was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And I love you just as much as I loved him, and I never want to go through that again, and I never want you to have to doubt that I love you and your brother the same. Always have, always will. From the moment you came into this world to the day I go out of it, I love you both just the same.”

“He was so much cooler than me,” Judith whispers, and her voice cracks on the words. “He always told me he was gonna be a cop, and I wanted to be one too, just because...because I thought he walked on water, Dad.”

“Carl would have made a damn fine cop,” Rick murmurs, clasping his hands tightly in front of him. “And you would, too, if you wanted to try.”

“He always told me not to,” Judith continues, her voice still trembling as she stares down at the floor. “He always told me to pick something safer, something that paid better...I never listened. Not until...until he...then I got what he was trying to say.”

“Carl loved you,” Rick swears, his eyes stinging at the surge of memories of his children together, the years they spent together, the way Carl had always been so protective of his little sister, born twelve years after him. “We let him pick your name. He picked it after his - his third-grade teacher, if you can believe it. He loved you from the moment he met you. You - you were his favorite person by far. We weren’t going to tell you until you were a little older, but - Carl left everything to you, everything in his bank account. Said in the will he wanted you to be able to go to college, any college you wanted, if he - he went before then.”

Judith’s eyes widen and she pushes the hat back to sit in its natural position atop the dark brown hair she shares with her brother and her mother both, her brown eyes glistening with fresh tears. “Of - of course he did...he had me thinking about college since I was old enough to read.”

“He knew how smart you are,” Rick explains, shuffling a little on the floor. The sun is high in the sky now, marking the time past noon, and a beam of light pours through the huge window of the living room, bathing them both in sun. “He saw it as soon as you started talking. He tried to keep it quiet, but he was hoping you’d be a criminal justice lawyer, help prosecute the guys he caught. But he would have been happy with anything, as long as you got the education he knew you deserved.”

Judith almost laughs, a few tears slipping down her cheeks. “Only - only Carl would look at a five-year-old and think ‘criminal justice lawyer.’”

“He was interesting like that,” Rick chuckles too, remembering the day Carl had slipped up and confessed his private hopes for his sister’s future. “But he loved you, Judith, I promise he did. All he wanted was the best for you.”

“Do you think-” Judith swallows hard, wiping away the tears leaving tracks down her pale cheeks. “Do you think he would have cared about - you know-”

“Absolutely not,” Rick answers immediately, and he doesn’t have to lie. “Carl wouldn’t have cared if you’d sold your soul to the devil himself. He adored you. He wouldn’t have even blinked.”

“You promise?” Judith’s voice shakes and she mops her eyes frantically on the end of her sleeve, trying to stop the slowly-increasing flow of fresh tears.

“Cross my heart,” Rick swears.

And she seems to believe him, because some of the tension slips out of her shoulders and she huffs a quiet sigh of relief, tracing the gold cord at the base of the sheriff’s hat absent-mindedly. “I miss him. It’s nice to talk about him.”

“It is,” Rick agrees, and again, he doesn’t have to lie, despite how bittersweet the memories are. “It really is.”


	16. They Grow Up So Fast

Rick is working on a report at his desk, relishing in the blissful quiet that is a rookie-free office, when the door swings open, creaking softly on its hinges. He looks up to see Rosita in the doorway, her face frighteningly pale. “Is - is Tara in?”

“She’s grabbing lunch. I’ll buzz her for you.” Rick reaches for his walkie, keeping an eye on Rosita, who looks as if she’s just seen a whole horror film’s worth of ghosts. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Rosita mumbles, in a voice that would convince absolutely no one, including Rick. “Just - I need to talk to Tara. I really need to talk to Tara.”

Rick elects not to push any further than that, pushing the button in the center of the walkie. “Kid, get back here. Your wife’s here to talk to you.”

A string of crackly cursing scratches through the speaker, and a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Be there in a minute.”

The mention of her wife blesses Tara with a speed that evades her when her early morning shifts begin, when Rick calls her name, or when there’s paperwork to be done, and she charges back into the office quite literally in a minute, boots clacking harshly against the tile, a grease-stained brown paper takeout bag in her hand. At the look on Rosita’s face, she pales as well, dropping the bag on Rick’s desk and reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder. “You wanna talk in the hallway?”

The moment the door clicks behind them, muffled strains of conversation float through the cracks in the hinges. Rick isn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he’s not  _ not  _ trying either, and it sounds like Rosita is doing most of the talking. Finally, silence for a moment, and he glances surreptitiously through the glass panel in the door to see Rosita buried in Tara’s arms, his trainee holding her tightly, her lips pursed thoughtfully. 

The door finally swings back open and Tara flops heavily into a waiting room chair, unaccompanied. “Rosita heading home?” Rick asks as casually as he can, glancing up once more from the report in which he’s now pretending to be immersed.

Tara shakes her head, rubbing her temples tiredly. “Felt sick again. She went out for some air...she told me to go ahead and tell you.”

“Something wrong?” Rick asks, dropping all pretenses of the report at the weight in her voice. It’s not like Tara to sound so exhausted. 

“Not  _ wrong, _ ” Tara says carefully, nervously playing with the ends of her ponytail. “It’s just...unexpected. And kind of a lot.”

“Don’t tell me or anything, though,” Rick says dryly, rolling the pen between his fingers.

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, but that’s all he can get out of her. “Rick, it’s...Ro’s having twins.”

The pen hits his desk with a clatter and rolls to the floor where it lies abandoned beneath the legs of his chair. Rick simply stares for a moment before her words click and he grins, striding over to clap Tara’s shoulder. “Congratulations, and also good luck.”

“Rick, I don’t even…” Tara shakes her head in disbelief, gazing up at him in shock. “We weren’t prepared for this. Not at all. I just...I wasn’t even remotely ready for  _ one  _ kid. How - how are we supposed to do two?”

“No one’s ever ready for parenthood, kid,” Rick tells her, vividly envisioning the early days with Carl. “Even with one kid, there are no rules, nothing will ever go down the way you planned it would, and silence is  _ always  _ the most dangerous sound in the world. Two’s just another thing that didn’t go like you planned.”

“I just-” Tara sighs, shuffling her boots awkwardly against the floor. “I don’t know…”   
  


“There’s nothing to not know,” Rick says firmly. “There’s no getting ready for being a parent, which means you gotta learn to roll with the punches, and you’ve just been punched. This is the first in a very long string of very unplanned moments, and some are gonna be good, and some aren’t, and you’re just gonna have to learn to take that too.”

Tara offers a weak, wry smile. “I gotta tell you, Rick, I’m scared shitless.”

“Even if it was just one on the way, I’d advise you to get used to it.” 

“How do we start?"   


“To start?” Rick shrugs. “Get another crib. Do whatever your doctor tells you to do. I don’t know jack about twins, kid, that’s all Beth’s job. And stop freaking out early. Save it for the first week.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m never sleeping again?” Tara asks, but her smile is a bit more real now.

“Because, between this job and screaming babies, you won’t. Good thing you’re already solidly addicted to caffeine.”

Tara hugs him suddenly, latching on like a limpet. A little startled, but not objecting, Rick ruffles her hair affectionately, giving her a light squeeze. “You’re gonna be fine, kid. I know you are.”

The door swings open slowly, the creaking of the hinges announcing Rosita’s return, and for the first time, it really clicks just how much of a toll pregnancy is taking on her. She’s grown horribly pale - which he now realizes wasn’t just a side effect of the news - and visibly skinnier, not ideal for being nearly two months pregnant. She’s moving slower too, struggling to walk on her prosthetic leg. Tara goes to her side in a heartbeat, easing her to sit in her own desk chair.

Tara might have been nervous, but Rosita’s terrified. Her hands are trembling as she picks at the chipped coat of deep blue nail polish on her fingers, most likely a nervous habit. Her lips are chapped, noticeably so - dehydrated, Rick guesses, from the persistent nausea Tara’s been mentioning. He sets a bottle of water down on the desk, pulling it from the twelve-pack he keeps in the office. Rosita’s face scrunches immediately at the thought of drinking and she eyes it nervously, as if it were a snake rearing up to bite her.

“You need to drink,” Rick tells her, settling into Tara’s abandoned waiting room chair. “I know you don’t want to, but being dehydrated’ll only make you feel worse.”

“I hate that you’re right,” Rosita mumbles, but she unscrews the cap, taking a tentative sip. Tara rubs her back lightly, eyeing her sympathetically. “God, this...I don’t know if I can do this. I really don’t.”   
  


“Ro, don’t talk like that…” Tara visibly winces, perching on the edge of the desk to be closer to her. “We’ll talk to Beth again, I’m sure she has something…”   
  


“You didn’t hear her.” Rosita shakes her head carefully, clenching her fist so hard around the water bottle that the plastic buckles under her grip. “She said that not only can I expect this to not let up for a good while yet - maybe not till it’s over - but it’s only gonna get worse. Tara, I’m already puking up my nausea pills before they can even start to help. I’m gonna die of dehydration.”

“It’s not gonna come to that,” Rick inserts. “If it gets that bad, we’ll get you an IV. That’s not ideal, but you’re not going to die.” 

Rosita swallows hard, sipping slowly on her water. “That’s not all I’m worried about.”

Tara flinches, touching her hand softly. “Ro, you sure you wanna tell him-"

“I already told Maggie,” Rosita says heavily, closing her hand over Tara’s. “He might as well know. It’s not like people are lining up to help us.”

Tara nods stiffly, rubbing her thumb slowly over Rosita’s knuckles. Before Rick can question whatever silent conversation they’re having, Rosita turns to him. “I’ve been taking Zoloft for the past couple of years for PTSD. I stopped just before we did the procedure. I’ve been off my meds for about two months now, and...I’m feeling it.”

Before Rick can formulate an answer, his mind spinning at this new information, Rosita turns the sick pale yellow of evaporated milk, clapping her free hand over her mouth. She got down about half the bottle, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to do her much good.

“Here, babe.” Tara nimbly scoops up the small trash bin she keeps beside her desk with a practiced ease, setting it in her lap. “I gotcha.”

Rosita lurches forward, coughing hard over the plastic bin. Tara smooths her hair clear of the mouth of the bin, patting her back sympathetically. Rick meets her eyes and she gives him a small shake of her head, nodding towards Rosita. He knows her well enough to get the silent message:  _ whatever advice you’re thinking of right now, keep it to yourself. _

Finally, Rosita comes up for air, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, breathing heavily from the force of her coughing fit. Tara offers her the bottle immediately, pushing her to drink. 

“ _ What _ is going on in here?” Basset, an officer who was young enough to train with Carl and stupid enough to still act like it, pokes his head around the corner, talking through a mouthful of his horrifying sandwich creation. Rick catches the heavy smell of mayonnaise and salami, along with God knows what else. “Rick, you having a party or something?”   
  


Rosita makes a horrible gagging noise, disappearing into the bin once more. “It’s the mayonnaise!” Tara says quickly, running a comforting hand down her back. “We can’t do mayo in here, it’s been making her sick since day one-”

“Out,” Rick orders immediately, starting towards Basset. “Get out, and take whatever  _ abomination  _ you’re holding with you.”

“But-” Rick straightens to his full height, straightening his deputy hat slightly, and Basset turns paler than Rosita.

“Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!” The office door slams hastily behind him, abruptly cutting off the worst of the smell. 

“Sorry,” Rosita mumbles weakly, her head lolling on Tara’s shoulder. “I really - I fucking  _ hate  _ mayonnaise.”

“Leon Basset is an idiot,” Rick says firmly, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Truly one of the dumbest, most careless men I have ever had the misfortune to work with. How did you get here? Tara said you don’t drive…”

“Walked,” Rosita answered, her voice gaining a bit of strength as she got her breath back. “Slowly. I’m supposed to be walking when I can…”

“Tara can take you home,” Rick responds, nodding to his trainee. “Be on watch for any flagrant lawbreaking on the way and it’ll be fine. I’ll talk to Lori when I drop Judith off tonight, see if she’s got anything...I know there were these ginger candies she swore by. And the offer still stands. If you call me, I’ll hear. Okay?”

Rosita manages to smile, although it comes out more like a grimace. “Okay. Thanks, Rick.”

Tara shoots him a grateful smile on her way out the door. Rick waves her out, cracking a smile in return before heading out himself to have a talk with Basset about the mayonnaise.


	17. 100000% Done With These Fetuses

Rick snatches up his phone the second it buzzes. He took a day off - Judith brought home a clean set of straight A’s, and he promised her pizza and a movie at the theater after school as a reward - but Tara didn’t, making this her first day at the station without his supervision. Hershel won’t let her out of the building, Rick knows, but that’s no guarantee she hasn’t found her way into trouble.

“Deputy Rick Grimes.”

“Rick?” Rosita’s voice trembles like a dying leaf in a strong gust of wind and Rick is on his feet immediately, reaching for his car keys.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” All-too-graphic images of a fall down the stairs, a home intruder, or some other terrible accident, all spattered with blood, immediately flood to his mind’s eye and he starts towards the car in the driveway, fist clenched tight around the keys. She’s silent for a minute, and that only scares him more. “Talk to me, Rosita.”

“It’s not - I don’t -” She audibly shudders, her voice breaking, and Rick lengthens his strides. 

“It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. Just talk to me, kid.” 

Rosita lets out a long, shaky breath. “It’s - I don’t know where I am. I keep - keep flashing back…”

“Back to Iraq?” Rick guesses at once, swinging into the driver’s seat. 

“Yeah...it’s just...my hands are  _ shaking _ , and I can’t walk without feeling like I’m going to fall...and I just keep going back, and the phantom pain…” Rosita exhales shakily again, the tapping of her prosthetic on the floor crackling through the speaker. “I’m losing track of where I am...of who I am…”

Rick is silent for a moment, chewing his lip thoughtfully as he pulls out of the driveway. “Do you want me to call Tara?”

“No,” Rosita says instantly, leaving no room for argument. “It’s her first day alone, she needs to focus, and she’ll just worry…don’t call her. Please.”

No Tara. Fair enough. She’d lose her senses with worry if she heard Rosita talking like this, Rick knows, and the last thing he needs is Tara charging into danger and getting herself fired or worse, shot, while her wife is like this. “I won’t. Not if you don’t want me to.”

“Thank you.” She doesn’t really sound like Rosita, and Rick speeds up a bit.

“Listen, kid, I’m on my way. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You don’t have to come all the way out here…” Rosita protests weakly, the tapping intensifying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you…”

“Rosita, I’m not doing anything until Judith’s out of school,” Rick assures her, turning onto the main road. “And that’s not for a few hours yet. I’m coming.”

The door is unlocked - for him, he’s not sure - and he lets himself in cautiously, making his presence known as he enters the hall. It’s oddly dark, most of the lights flicked off. The shadows are almost foreboding as he follows what light there is to the kitchen.

Rosita sits quietly at the kitchen table, rolling a small metal tag between her fingers. Her dog tags, Rick realizes. She doesn’t look up at his footsteps, and it’s with some hesitancy that he takes the seat across the dark wooden table from her. “Hey.”

The tag stills in her fingers. Carefully, Rick reaches over, pulling the tag from her unresisting hand. “I don’t think this is gonna help.”

“You’re probably right,” Rosita murmurs, frighteningly still on the other side of the table. Rick turns the tag over, reading the standard issue engraving.  _ Espinosa, Rosita M. H. Blood type: AB+. Catholic. _

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Catholic,” Rick says lightly, setting the tag down. The dull metal gleams in the light from the bulb above them.

“I’m not,” Rosita responds, her finger lightly tracing the seam down the table, separating the two pieces of wood. “Parents were. I was just a kid when I enlisted. Didn’t feel like I had any other choice.”

“You were running from something,” Rick says softly. “Somebody, maybe. But you were running. Something tells me you still are.”

“I got away from a lot when I got my citizenship papers,” Rosita murmurs, determinedly focusing upon the patterns in the wood. “There’s some things that are hard to ditch.”

“Have you talked to Tara?” Rick reaches out hesitantly, resting a hand on her arm. “Kid’s got a good head on her shoulders, even if she don’t use it much. And she knows you, or at least loves you enough to try.”

Rosita shakes her head carefully, her tawny eyes glistening slightly. “I - Tara and I, we’ve not been talking much. Not recently. These babies - everything’s different now, and - we don’t talk anymore, not really.”

“Then start,” Rick says firmly. “Lori and I ended it because we stopped talking about things that mattered. And I don’t think you and Tara are anywhere near that, and you don’t want to be. Some things are hard to talk about. But you should anyway.”

Rosita doesn’t look entirely convinced, and Rick pushes a bit harder, his voice quiet but stubborn. “It’s okay to be something other than excited about having a baby. Especially about having two. Even ones you’ve wanted for a long time. Kids are scary shit. You don’t gotta play happy all the time, kid. Tara doesn’t either, and I think she’ll be happy to know she’s not the only one that’s scared.”

“Tara and I…” Rosita exhales deeply, her hand suddenly closing into a fist. “We used to talk about  _ everything.  _ There were always...I always kept a few things to myself, some of the worst...and I think she kept a little back too, honestly...but we could talk, and we would, just any time...she’d sit with me and listen to whatever memory I couldn’t get out of my head, and it didn’t...didn’t stop it, really, but it helped, to have her telling me I wasn’t crazy…”

“But you stopped,” Rick finishes quietly. “You’ve been growing apart for a few months now, haven’t you?”

Rosita’s silence is confirmation enough. Rick inhales a little sharply, running words over his tongue to string together what he’s thinking so clearly. He never was very good at speaking his mind.

“Lori and I split up because something happened and we didn’t talk,” Rick says finally, flinching as Rosita’s head snaps up at the mention of splitting. “Something big, and we never talked about it, and that’s why it ended. And there were other things too, of course there were, but...we might have kept it together, if it hadn’t been for that. But that doesn’t have to be you and Tara. You’re - you’re different. What you’ve got is better than anything Lori and I ever had, and it’s something to fight for. Love like that is something to fight for.”

“I think she wants to talk,” Rosita murmurs, her voice choked on a lump in her throat. “She - she tries, but - it just doesn’t -”

“Kid, this ain’t the movies,” Rick says gently. “Talking ain’t always gonna be easy, and love ain’t either. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to happen. Tara’s gonna be home in what, two hours? Bite the bullet and do it. You’ll both feel better for it.”

“I hope so,” Rosita murmurs. “God, I hope so.”

Tara’s keys jangle in the lock right on time, her work boots heavy on the wooden floorboards. She’s still in uniform, her dark hair tugged back in a tight ponytail. At the sight of Rick at the table, she loses a little color, rushing to Rosita’s side almost instinctively. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Rosita says softly, tilting her chin up to kiss Tara’s cheek. “Go ahead and get changed, honey. I just...I’d like to talk, that’s all.”

Tara shoots a worried glance at Rick, then back to Rosita, a million questions scrawled across her face. “I - okay, yeah, of course. Just let me get out of uniform - you’re sure everything’s okay?”

Rosita nods, squeezing her arm briefly. “I’m okay.” Tara swallows hard, but doesn’t argue further, pressing a return kiss to Rosita’s lips before darting out of the room to change. 

She comes back in a dark grey tank top that hangs loosely off her frame and her black sweatpants, her dark hair, now free of its ponytail, dancing over her shoulders. Her eyes are dark with worry. “Okay. I’m - I’m here. Couch?”

Rosita nods, standing unsteadily, clutching Tara’s arm for support. “Couch sounds good. I’m not leaving you, honey, if that’s what you’ve got your nose all scrunched up about.”

It’s the first time in a few months Rick has heard her really talk like the Rosita he met at the dinner party, and his face splits into a grin that only widens when he sees how Tara really is scrunching her nose. “I’ve got a kid to take to the movies. I’ll be off the radar for a few hours tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow, Tara. Tell me about your first day then.”

Tara looks somehow even more confused, but nods, squeezing Rosita’s shoulder. Rick tips his hat and steps out. There are some things he doesn’t need to know.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judith has been raving about the  _ Birds of Prey  _ movie for weeks now, and while Rick isn’t one for superhero movies, he promised her anything that wasn’t rated R. They catch the 7:00 p.m. showing and swing by Ezekiel’s Pizzeria after for a late dinner. Ezekiel spent his youth well, inherited money from the right people, and lived it up on Wall Street for decades before changing his mind about big city life. He moved down to King County, adopted a bunch of kids from the local group home, and opened his own business. The place is built like a fifties diner, complete with a working jukebox, the pizza is ridiculously cheesy with the kind of stuffed crust that never gets old, and Ezekiel himself is one of the most beloved members of the community. When Rick and Judith swing in, Carol is at the bar where the milkshakes are served - those milkshakes are works of art - and he hides a smile at the way Ezekiel looks at her. His soft spot for her is no secret - probably not even to Carol herself - and Rick privately hopes that it’ll finally happen one day. Ezekiel’s a good man, and a good father. He’d be good for her and Sophia both.

Ezekiel’s oldest is waiting tables tonight - he hired her when she turned sixteen, and she’s been working her way through college there ever since. Enid’s always been quiet - Rick isn’t privy to what put her in a group home, but Ezekiel’s protectiveness over her makes it clear that it was bad - but she’s a good kid, and she likes Judith. It’s a slow night, and a pile of books at the bar tells him that she’s been working late on her schoolwork.

While they’re waiting for the pizza, Judith disappears to feed quarters into the jukebox, a privilege Rick grants hesitantly after she got a little too trigger-happy with “What’s New Pussycat?” the last time they came here. Enid settles down at the bar, diving back into a textbook as thick as Rick’s fist. Carol laughs at something Ezekiel said, and the look on his face is brighter than the sun.

“Hey there, Officer.”

Rick’s head snaps around to see Michonne standing in the low lights of the diner, illuminated by a light directly above her head. Her dark skin practically glows, a smile teasing at the edge of her mouth. It’s the most casually dressed he’s ever seen her - a creamy-orange top that bares her midriff and a skirt of a similar shade, her well-muscled legs and toned arms on display. “Mind if I sit?”

“Course not.” Rick nods to Judith’s abandoned side of their red-vinyl upholstered booth. “My daughter’s off fooling around with the jukebox; she won’t be back for a bit. What’s got you out here so late?”

“I’ve been working late for a week,” Michonne replies, sinking into the booth gracefully, somehow managing to avoid squeaking the squealing vinyl. “I wanted a break, some pizza, some time away from the books. I’m a lawyer,” she adds at the question apparent on Rick’s face. “Criminal justice. Got a big case coming up.”

Rick returns her easy smile, praying to God above he isn’t blushing. “Let me say, ma’am, that as the sheriff’s deputy, I appreciate your work.”

“And I appreciate yours,” Michonne answers, drumming her orange-painted nails on the tabletop. “Couldn’t prosecute the bad guys without you out there catching them for me. That your daughter over there?” She nods towards Judith’s purple flannel-clad back, the sheriff’s hat balanced on her head.

“That’d be her. Brought home a perfect report card, so we did a movie and some pizza.” Rick can’t help but beam with pride at the mention of the grades that brought them here. Judith is currently flipping between songs, leaving it quiet except for the clanging of dishes in the diner, and Michonne smiles towards her as well. 

“Jessie’s mentioned her before. Says she’s a good kid.” Jessie Anderson taught Judith for most of middle school; she’d know. Michonne turns back to him, an expression on her face that Rick can’t quite decipher. “Her mom couldn’t make it?”

“I don’t think her mom and I have gone out together in about three years,” Rick replies easily, and the reminder of their separation oddly doesn’t hurt too badly. “Lori and I split a while back.”

“Mm.” Michonne holds a damn good poker face, but her dark eyes flicker with interest. Rick’s never seen a color like her eyes. They’re brown, but not just plain brown - a deep, rich, earthy color, flecked with speckles of amber. They’re enchanting, and he has to subtly pinch his thigh under the table to keep his mind firmly on its set track.

Judith finally settles on something over by the jukebox, and a crackly rendition of “Who Loves You” by the Four Seasons drifts from the speakers. Michonne smiles, nodding towards the old-style jukebox. “Kid’s got good taste for a teenager.”

Rick nods, tapping his foot in time to the familiar beat. “I’ve taught her well.”

Michonne tilts her head slightly, studying him as if he were a lawbook. He can tell she’s not one to ever play cards with - not for cash, anyway - her poker face is perfection. But he can make out just a hint of consideration behind her stare, a gamble being weighed. 

Finally, she smiles, more freely than before, revealing stunningly white teeth. A pen appears from out of nowhere, and she scribbles on the side of a napkin, pushing it over to him. Ten digits. Her phone number. “My cases are calling, Officer. Maybe you will too. Until then…”

She waves a farewell, and then she’s gone, and the world suddenly seems a little bit dimmer as Rick pockets the napkin, certain he’s flushing to the tips of his ears. Then Enid comes by with their pizza, one of her rare smiles edging onto her face, and Judith abandons the jukebox to stuff her face with too much cheese and garlicky crust.

Sometimes the world is all right.


	18. Chapter 18: Well That Really Isn't Ideal

Tara doesn’t look like she’s slept when Rick catches her coming into the station early in the morning, her hair jerked lazily into a messy ponytail and dark circles ringing her eyes as she flops into her desk chair, even the iced coffee in her hand failing to perk her up. “You’re too young to look that old,” Rick says flatly, settling into his own chair. 

“I feel pretty old,” Tara says quietly, toying with her straw rather than actually drinking. 

“Okay.” Rick drops the teasing, leaning forward at his desk. “Talk to me, kid.”

Tara sighs, her fingers drumming an anxious beat across the faux-wood desktop. “What Rosita wanted to talk about...was hard to talk about. For both of us. She told me things she’d never told me before...things I never would have thought of that happened to her over there. She cried. I cried too. It was...it was hard.”

“But do you regret it?”

Tara shakes her head slowly. “No. It was hard, but it was good. It was a good thing. It’s good - good to know that she’s scared too, I guess. That it’s not just me that’s scared out of my mind.”

“Do you know what you’re scared of?” 

“Losing a kid. Losing both. Losing Ro. Losing all three. Mostly that. But it’s just - it’s a lot of change, and that’s scary too.” Tara twirls her pencil thoughtfully. “I’m mostly scared of something going wrong, but even if it doesn’t...it’s all just...a lot.”

“‘A lot’ pretty much sums up parenthood,” Rick agrees, spinning his chair from side to side. “Not always gonna be scary, though. It’s a lot in a pretty good way.”

Her eyes circled in dark rings, Tara manages a weak smile, stifling a yawn. “I just...she was talking, and crying, and I just...I just held her, all night. And now I’m so tired and sore and I want to fall asleep on my desk, but...it was worth it. Every minute. We haven’t talked like that since...since we first started trying again.”

“Good for you, kid.” Rick strides over, ruffling her already messy hair affectionately before dropping a stack of reports onto her desk. Tara startles at the  _ thud,  _ her heavy eyes briefly snapping open. “Now get to work.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Four months fly by as easily as breathing. Judith’s taken to waiting up for Rick when he’s not off too late, and now he gets to see his daughter almost every other day in the evenings. Carol finally agrees to dinner with Ezekiel, and the whole town - her daughter and Daryl included - reply with a definitive “Finally!” Rick makes a few calls to a certain lawyer, and they have a few casual “for business” lunches that always leave him feeling a bit giddy. Rosita’s stomach rounds gradually, and despite her former protests to the contrary, the nausea backs down eventually, some of the color flooding back to her cheeks.

And Tara grows too, day by day learning more and more. She’s relaxed on the job, calm, mature, and responsible, cautious but not too cautious but not reckless. The town seems to quiet down along with their lives, and there’s little cause for more than routine traffic stops in King County.

Until his dispatcher calls in over the walkie, her voice nearly trembling. “Rick, we’ve got a situation at the Peletier house.”

That sentence alone is enough to flick on his adrenaline switch and Rick snatches the device up, ignoring Tara’s startled jump at his lunge. “What kind of situation?”

“Ed Peletier escaped from West Georgia Correctional Facility this morning,” the dispatcher informs him gravely. “He’s believed to be armed and dangerous. Sophia called 9-1-1, doing the order-a-pizza thing. Probably looking at a hostage deal.”

“We’ll be there in three minutes,” Rick snaps, shoving his chair back. “Tara, Basset, Walsh, Kendal, with me!”

Tara knows better than to question that particular tone and bolts after him immediately, practically tripping over the leg of her chair in the process. “What’s the call?”

“Ed’s got a gun on the Peletiers,” Rick replies grimly, trying to ignore the panicky surge of fear in his chest as he strides towards his squad car, a troop of cops behind him. “We’ve got your first hostage situation, kid.”

Tara throws him a questioning glance - one Rick pointedly ignores - and she doesn’t press any further than that, diving into the passenger seat of their car without hesitation. He’s taught her well. “You do exactly what I say, you hear?” Rick orders, throwing the car into first gear, then rapidly into second and up through the gears until he reaches fifth, flying down the street with his sirens wailing. “You stay back, keep your gun out, and if I tell you to get to the car and call for backup I don’t care if Christ himself comes down through the pearly gates to tell you otherwise, you do it, you hear?”

“I hear you,” Tara affirms, smart enough to know not to tease right now. “What’s the plan?”

“Shane, Kendal, and I will take point,” Rick directs, nodding towards the two cars wailing behind him, lights flashing wildly. “You and Basset hang back. If you can see Sophia or Carol, try to get them to you, cover them with your own fire. They’ll probably be hurt, have dispatch on standby for an ambulance. I don’t want you in combat unless you don’t got another choice, got it?”

“Got it,” Tara replies confidently, sticking the walkie into her belt to have it at the ready as instructed. “Hey, Rick?”

“Yeah, kid?” He can’t bear to look at her. Not as she sits in Carl’s seat on the way to the spot where Carl died. 

“Be careful, okay?”

Rick nods, his throat suddenly tightening with a lump he can’t swallow. He reaches over and gruffly pats her arm, unable to meet her eyes. Tara leans into the touch, and he’s suddenly aware that she’s trembling. “It’s gonna be okay,” Tara breathes, her breath rattling a little. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.

Rick slams on the brakes outside the Peletier house, out of the car the second the ignition dies. Tara’s right on his tail, pulling her gun out of its holster. Her hair brushes her shoulders in the wind, and the timeline between past and present splinters once more. 

He brushes it off, scanning the yard for the bastard. Shane and Kendal are with him in seconds, sirens still blaring atop their squad cars. The air pulses with suspense. Tara and Basset hang back as ordered, guns at the ready.

The door suddenly creaks, and Rick trains his gun directly on Ed Peletier’s left eye socket as he steps out, limping heavily on his left leg, Sophia pinned in his arms. Her one good eye flashes with fear, tears shining on her face as she thrashes weakly, practically doubled over with sobs. She’s too close to Ed to shoot. He can’t risk hitting Sophia, and from the filthy grin on the sick son of a bitch’s face, that’s what he was counting on.

“Hey there, Ricky!” Ed calls, his voice raspy from years of cigarettes. “Well, isn’t this a blast from the past!”

“Let Sophia go and maybe we’ll let you live,” Rick growls, his finger hovering just a centimeter from the trigger. 

“Oh, but you see,” Ed drawls, cackling with a horrible sneer that reveals a mouth full of blood, and Rick suddenly sees that Sophia’s knuckles are bloody.  _ Good girl.  _ “You can’t shoot me without hitting Sophia, can you? And you won’t kill her, I know you won’t. Ricky won’t shoot you, will he, baby girl?”

Sophia squirms hard, managing to get a solid kick in his shins, but only slips a few inches. Growling with rage, Ed slaps her hard from behind, knocking her head hard to the left. There’s a flash, and a gun comes out of nowhere, glinting in the deceptively cheerful sunlight. “Now, Ricky,” Ed drawls, barely concealed rage flickering across his face. “I think we all remember how this turned out last time, don’t we? Now, are you ready to listen?”

Sophia’s pleading eye locks onto his, tears leaving tracks in the blood on her face. Rick exhales hard, lowering the gun slightly. “What do you want, you bastard?”

“You’re gonna let me go,” Ed declares, shaking Sophia hard for emphasis. “You’re gonna get me into one of those protection programs. My prison sentence is gonna go away. And I want $10,000 to get me started in my brand new life, don’t I, princess? And if not-”

Ed nods towards the cars, where Tara and Basset are standing, guns still aimed at his skull. “I’ve got my gun on the scrawny kid with the blonde hair. I shoot him, then Sophia here goes with him, and then I guess I’ll have to go out by suicide by cops. But I bet I can pump off my two shots before you get yours in. So, how about that new life, Ricky?”

Behind him, Tara suddenly shrieks, confused terror lacing her voice. “What are you - Basset!  _ Basset! _ ”

Rick whirls around just in time to see Tara, gun held up high, fear written all over her face, the back of Basset’s head disappearing behind a squad car, leaving her vulnerable from the side. “Rick! Rick, what do I do?”

“Tara, go, get behind-” But before he can finish his sentence, Ed cackles again, a horrifying, sick sound, and he gargles on his own blood as the gunshot rings through the air. 

Tara’s hand flies to her chest, utter shock displayed all over her frightened, pale face, and then she crumples, crimson blood already flowing through her fingers. Rick screams and barely hears it, his throat ragged as he pumps off two shots, reeling so hard on the spot that everything goes numb. All he can see is Tara falling, collapsing like a rag doll, a bullet ripping through her with jagged talons, rending flesh and tearing her apart.


	19. You Have Been Explicitly Forbidden to Die

The first bullet hits Ed in the injured leg, and he falls hard, and even before he can bring the gun up, Rick fires a second shot into his yellowed, feral eye. Sophia feebly pulls herself up, but as soon as Rick spots movement, he bolts for Tara.

There’s blood, a lot. But maybe not too much. Rick rips off his tan overshirt, leaving himself in a plain white cotton shirt as he presses the jacket against the wound. As close as it is, it missed her heart, piercing her through the right shoulder, and her breathing is shallow but even as he desperately attempts to stem the flow of blood.

“Shane, call dispatch for an ambulance now!” Rick barks, his throat ragged from screaming. “Kendal, assess Sophia and get the kit out of my car!”   
  


The first aid kit drops by his side in a matter of moments and Rick roots through it frantically, plugging the bullet hole with a fistful of sterile gauze. Tara moans softly in pain, her eyelids fluttering, and it hits him that she’s not quite out yet - although she’s well on the way - and she might be able to hear him.

“Kid, you listen to me,” Rick demands, pulling her head gently into his lap. “You are not allowed to die, understand? You are going to live and that is a direct order from a superior officer, do you hear me, Officer Chambler? You have - you have a  _ wife,  _ and kids coming soon, and you are  _ going  _ to be there, got it? You are not going  _ anywhere!”  _ His fingers gently smooth her hair back from her face, and Tara slowly turns her head into his hand. The blood is still coming, turning the clog of gauze scarlet, and Rick swallows around a lump like a golfball in his throat, cradling her head protectively. “You stay with me, Tara. You stay with me.”

Sirens wail, casting red flickers across the deceptively peaceful lawn. Paramedics come out of nowhere, rushing to Tara’s side, and Rick lets them have her, stumbling away on shockingly weak legs. It vaguely hits him that his cheeks are wet, and he doesn’t bother brushing the tears away. “How’s Sophia?”

“Banged up,” Kendal says quietly, shuffling his feet a little. “Scared. She’ll be fine. Carol too. How’s Chambler?”

“Breathing,” Rick manages, fixating upon a skulking Basset in the back corner. “Leon Basset, get your coward ass over here.”

Eyes wide, Basset drags himself over, staring at the trampled grass beneath them. “Yes, sir…”

“You ran out on your partner today,” Rick growls, glaring down at the younger man. “And because of you, there’s a good kid lying on the ground bleeding. You wanna be the one to tell her family that? You wanna tell them you got Tara shot?”

Basset turns to Kendal for sympathy, but finds none. Rick’s always liked him for that. Just because he trained Basset doesn’t mean he’s getting any softer for him, especially with a kid as young as Tara being loaded into an ambulance. “I would make you call her house right now,” Rick snaps, keeping his eye on Tara’s stretcher. “But I’m not gonna do that to her family. Go home and don’t come back unless you’re called. You’re suspended until further notice. I don’t wanna see your face again unless Officer Greene calls you back.”

Then he’s got no more time to waste on Basset, because the paramedics are starting to take Tara away, and he’ll be damned if she’s going alone. He settles by her side, taking her hand gently. She’s fading fast, but she’s still here for now, her pale, cold hand closing weakly around his. “R - Ri-”

“Shh.” Rick smooths a hand over her hair, brushing away a few tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. “Don’t try to talk. I’m here. I’m gonna call Rosita for you. It’s gonna be okay, kid.”

Tara manages a faint smile, her hand going limp in his. Her eyelids slowly stop fluttering, and then she’s gone, unconscious on the stretcher. Rick sighs, his gaze falling to her shoulder. She’s been wrapped up in gauze and cotton, a tourniquet slowing the flow of crimson blood oozing from the wound. She’s sickly pale from blood loss, her head lolling limply as the ambulance races down the road. Rick barely hears the sirens.

Shooting Ed was clearly self-defense. The man proved he was more than willing to shoot cops, and Tara could be dead if the threat hadn’t been neutralized in time. Hell, he’d tried to bribe five police officers into letting him go after years of beating his family. But the court might not see it that way. And Rick can’t quite shake the guilt that comes from killing a man. 

He’s never fired with intent to kill before. Even when he opened fire after Carl, he’d been aiming to wound. It had been different, then - Sophia had given him an opening then, biting her father’s hand that held her captive, and he’d already known that Carl was gone. The spray of blood that arced towards the sky nearly ten feet high had been enough. But he can’t stop replaying the scene in his head, over and over like a broken record.

He promised Tara he’d call Rosita, and it should be him to let her know, so he distracts himself from his guilt by dialing her number, his hands already shaking in preparation to give Rosita some of the worst news of her life. She picks up on the second ring, her voice shockingly casual with all the somberness around them. “Hello?”

“Rosita,” Rick says heavily, clenching his hand into a fist around the phone. “I need to tell you something, okay?”

Rosita’s a soldier, and she knows exactly what that tone means. “It’s - it’s Tara, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rick affirms, secretly grateful that she’s figured out the worst for herself. “It’s okay. She’s alive. The bullet missed her heart. I’m in an ambulance with her now. We’re going to Saint Margaret Mary now.”

Rosita exhales shakily, tears in her throat that nearly break Rick’s heart. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be there soon, as soon as I can. I need you to promise me something, Rick. Please?”

“Anything,” Rick swears immediately. Tara whimpers in her unconsciousness, her hand tugging at the bandages, and he pulls it away gently, squeezing her cold hand. 

“I need you to stay with her. As long as you can, I need you to stay with her - she can’t be alone, okay? I need you there, and if - if anything changes-” Rosita chokes on a sob and Rick winces at the sound.

“Of course. She’s probably gonna have to go into surgery. I’ll be there as much as I can, I won’t leave unless they make me. Glenn and Maggie gonna take you?”

“I hope,” Rosita says softly. “If not, I’ll walk. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay? Just - Tara can’t be alone. She doesn’t react to anesthesia well, and she’s already gotta be so scared-”

“I’ll be there if you’re not,” Rick assures her, wincing at the mention of anesthesia issues. He’s never done well coming off the sleepy stuff himself, and Tara’s high-strung enough when she’s not drugged. “I’ll be there.”

They take Tara to surgery as he predicted. He’s seen people shot before. There wasn’t an exit wound when they carried her away, meaning someone’s still got to fish that bullet out of her. She’s gone in seconds, disappearing along with Dr. Stookey, and although Rick trusts Bob Stookey with her easily, it’s difficult to wait there alone.

Until ten minutes after she’s gone, when the Greene-Rhee’s farm truck rolls up along the curb and Rosita dashes out with Maggie at her side, both their faces tight with worry. “How is she?” Rosita demands the second she spots him, frantic with worry. “Is she alive, is she going to be okay?”   
  
“They just took her back,” Rick confirms heavily, rising to his feet. “It hit her under the shoulder, few inches shy of her heart. No exit wound. She’s got a good surgeon, best one we’ve got out here. If anyone can save her, it’ll be Bob.”

“How’d it happen?” Rosita asks numbly, her hand almost subconsciously gripping Maggie’s arm for support. “What happened…?”

“She did everything right,” Rick promises at once. “Everything, I swear. We were answering a domestic violence call, and the guy pulled a gun. He was trying to bribe us, said he’d shoot Basset if it wasn’t going his way, and Basset -” Rick clenches his fists in fury at the memory of the young officer. “Basset panicked. He ran out on her to save his own skin and Ed shot her down for fun, just ‘cause he could.”

Rosita nods, swallowing hard on a lump in her throat. Behind her, Glenn crashes through the door - he must have been driving - eyes dark with worry and anger. Rick vaguely remembers Tara referring to him as her best friend sometime a while back. “Where’s the asshole who shot her?”

“Dead,” Rick informs him without ceremony. “Had to move his hostage a bit to fire. Soon as I saw her drop I took the shot.”

“Good,” Glenn mumbles, but he’s none too good at sounding hateful, the rage overcast with fear. 

“I’ve seen people shot before,” Rick says somewhat flatly, speaking more to Rosita than to anyone else. “She’s in for a long recovery. There’s gonna be a lot of physical therapy to get her arm back to half of what it used to be-”

“Oh, no, not physical therapy,” Rosita says suddenly, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Whatever will we do? We’ve never had to deal with  _ that  _ before.”

Her eyes fall to her prosthetic leg and she almost laughs, nodding towards the door behind which they whisked Tara away. “I know exactly what she’s in for, and I guarantee she probably does too. And we can handle it. Already have.” She lowers her voice, almost whispering as she studies the sleek metal prosthetic. “When I lost my leg I didn’t want to live anymore, Rick. Didn’t wanna walk, didn’t wanna talk, didn’t wanna breathe. Until I met Tara, and she kept me going just long enough to learn to want to live again. I took my first steps on my new leg with her right next to me. It’s gonna take a lot more than a bullet to scare me.”

Her eyes are suddenly very teary, and Rick wraps a gentle arm around her shoulders, squeezing her as she buries her head in his thin shirt. Maggie settles by her side, rubbing her shoulder lightly. Glenn paces around the waiting room, his jaw tight, and Rick is privately thankful Ed died before Glenn caught wind of what he’d done, because he doesn’t fancy trying to pry the usually-gentle farmer off of the bastard - as much as he’d like to see his face pounded in once and for all. 

And then they wait. 


	20. Hiatus Until Further Notice

Ugh. I really didn't want to do this.

But coronavirus has been hitting my area really hard, and between adjusting to a whole new workplace and not being at all sure what's going to happen with school, writing is going to have to move to the back burner for the foreseeable future. I'm going to continue to work on the next chapter as I can, and hopefully I'll be back soon.

Thanks,

Mac


	21. Babe, You're Such A Nerd

Tara is  _ frighteningly  _ pale.

She’s lying in a hospital bed, barely awake, blinking blearily into the bright fluorescent lights beaming down on her. She’s practically blending in with the bedsheets, her dark hair one hell of a stark contrast to all that white. Rosita is at her side in seconds, and even nauseated, drugged-up, and half-dead, Tara starts trying to sit herself up. Rick strides over as well, flicking her firmly between the eyes.

“Lay back, kid. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” When she complies, he smiles, ruffling her hair gently. “Good to see you awake.”

Rosita lays by her side, gently stroking her hair away from her face, propping herself up on one elbow. “How are you feeling, honey…?”

“Like Swiss cheese,” Tara murmurs hoarsely, turning her head into Rosita’s waiting embrace. 

“Swiss cheese…?”

“Yeah. ‘M holey. Get it, Ro? Rick?”

Rosita rolls her eyes even as they well with tears, chuckling as she leans in for a kiss. “The whole world out there of jokes you could have made, and you pick  _ Swiss cheese?  _ Baby, you’re the biggest nerd in the universe.”

“Yeah, drugs are doing their job, all right.” Rick pulls a chair up to the side of her bed and takes a seat, squeezing Tara’s free hand. “All jokes aside, kid, how do you feel?”

“Pretty bad…” Tara admits, her voice raspy with exhaustion. “Sick, ‘n dizzy, ‘n cold…”

Rosita is already reaching for blankets before Rick can think to move, wrapping Tara up lovingly. “You don’t half-ass anything, do you, honey? You gotta need four hours of surgery for your first on-the-job injury…”

“‘M sorry…” Tara mumbles, nestling into the blankets like a baby animal. “Wasn’t on purpose, baby...how’s Sophia…? She okay…?”

“You’re a good kid,” Rick tells her affectionately, ruffling her dark hair. “Just scrapes and bruises. Scared but fine. She’d like to thank you, when you’re up to getting up and walking around.”

“What’s gonna happen…?” Tara manages, her eyelids already drooping. “With work...and the wound...and the babies…?”

“Kid, you’ve just been  _ shot.  _ You don’t need to worry about anything other than getting better. Your time off’s paid, as long as you need to be cleared to work. The shot could have been better, it could have been worse. You’re in for a tough road, kid, but you’ll bounce back.”

“And as for the babies,” Rosita adds, taking Tara’s good hand and gently pressing it to her heavily swollen stomach, letting her feel them kick. “Healthy. Happy. Excited to meet you. One gunshot isn’t getting in the way of anything.”

Tara smiles weakly, already on her way out again, her hand resting limply over Rosita’s belly. “Course it’s not...nothing’s gonna take me away from you...you and them, all right…?”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rick is having a cup of coffee and a heap of paperwork back at the station when the door to his office creaks open slowly. He glances up, expecting Herschel - it’s far too late for Judith to be paying him a visit, and the rest of the station’s gone home for the evening except for a car or two out patrolling the streets - but instead he’s met with none other than Michonne, her arms folded. “You haven’t called me in two weeks, Officer. Thought I’d come to see if you were still breathing down here.”

Her voice is light, but also tinged with hurt, and Rick feels an immediate wave of guilt because he hasn’t even told her about Tara. She’s heard, of course she’s heard - in this town, the cows getting out makes the news, a police officer being shot in the line of duty’s a guaranteed headline for weeks - but not from him, and he has a deep instinct that she should have.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, and he means it, shuffling aside the latest stack of paperwork related to Ed’s death. “I really am. Had an officer get shot, and I’m tangled up to my eyes in paperwork because of that incident-”

“Ed Peletier,” she says, and it’s not a question. “I heard you shot him.”

“He shot my officer,” Rick replies at once, a sudden lump welling in his throat as it’s been doing all too often at the memory of Tara crumpling like a rag doll. “I didn’t...I didn’t have a choice. The kid was gonna die…”

“I wasn’t judging,” she tells him, and it’s honest. “I was here to thank you. I put him away the first time. And I’m damn glad I won’t have to do it again. That he’s been put away for  _ good. _ ”

“I didn’t know that was you.” Now that he thinks about it, he does remember her, vaguely, through a haze of grief and a world fogged over by the death of his son. But he doesn’t want to count that as their first meeting. He infinitely prefers the dinner party at Tara’s house, the evening at Ezekiel’s diner, even the search of her house for Louis Morales. “You shouldn’t thank me for that.”

“Carol Peletier does. Sophia too.”

“I wish I didn’t have to kill him,” Rick says finally, and then he’s thinking about Tara again, and how she fell just like Carl did. “I didn’t want to kill him.”

“Good,” Michonne says softly, perching on the edge of his desk. “You don’t have to want to kill him to leave the world better off for it.”

“I care a lot about her,” Rick confesses suddenly. “The kid he shot. Tara. I’ve been training her. But it’s more than that. She’s...she’s like a daughter to me. It’s the only reason I killed him. Only reason I  _ could  _ kill him. Because it was her. I saw her fall, and I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t risk her bleeding to death before I got there.”

Michonne reaches out, and rests her hand over his tentatively. Her nail polish is very bright. Lemon yellow, and it pops brilliantly against her dark skin, even in the dim light of his office. “You’re a good man, Rick Grimes. A very good man.”

“I try to be,” Rick says hoarsely, gingerly taking her hand. He feels like she might evaporate if he touches her. Like he’s dreaming all of this, and any minute now he’ll wake up at his desk, his coffee gone cold and the ink of his pen squiggled over his paperwork. “I do my best, Michonne.”

She doesn’t kiss him. But it strikes him for the first time that he wishes she would. 


End file.
